This is as good as any place to have a rant. So I do have 4G which should serve as a good standby due to lack of broadband. But I discover the following.
I can't connect to my iCloud account on the new system because it's not already logged in. So the hotspot won't work unless I open it up to "everyone". Not doing that, not worth the risk.
My old system is now jury rigged on the new desk so that I can keep an eye on my cctv suff which is still working locally since I floodwired the place (garages, shed, workshop, whole of house, with ethernet. With ethernet connected, this machine won't connect to the internet via WiFi (i.e. hotspot).
So iPhoto synch and file synch is happening right now (with ethernet disconnected) on my old drive , annoying since I will have to manually synch all my backups or start "losing" files and what I was planning on was a nice quick switchover.
I have multiple cloud based accounts for example my real Human account (with email, data, phone. eBay. forums etc) and a Screwdriver account also with data, phone etc. I keep them separate (I AM NOT SCREWDRIVER!!) so that I can happily engage with other aliases or people I don't know or companies I don;t want to be spammed by etc. I think the drug dealers call it a "burner" phone but I have a "burner" life...
Also, a lot of my softwares have limited seats, my cctv for example has ONE seat so I need to "deauthorise" one installation before it will become valid on a new system. NB nt as simple as simply logging out. It's all pretty mind boggling having spent the last thirty years just copying my digital self from one machine to another until, like my actual life it is fantastically cluttered with stuff I just can't throw away.
Hence my "home system" has in excess of 800 GB of on it. And that does NOT include a huge film library or a huge video backup from GoPro/YouTube content creation. That stuff is spread over half a dozen other disks and older Mac systems.
But the lack of broadband at the precise instant I needed it has been a mixed blessing. Means I couldn't just rush into it. I know what I am like and I would just be "ahh fuckit" and just do a clone and deal with the wreckage (see above!).
So I am deciding NOT to copy my old system, nor all my archive data, nor even the actual software and login data. This new M1 Mac Mini will be all new, properly installed software and content generated on this system, stays on this system. Sort of thing. Therefore I won't be using the ultra high speed Lacie as a boot drive. It can be done and I can do it but it is fraught with potential issues I just don't want to eplore. It is after all an entirely new chipset. The M1 is the new Apple ARM silicon and it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking you know all about bootloaders and disk formats when in a new architecture, you don't
know what you don't know...
I will of course be using the LaCie as intended as a very high speed media dive for photo, video and 3D content generation.
Someone was saying 'what would you do when you retire" well, here I am retired and doing exactly what I was doing 25-30 years ago!