Coming from a 2015 macbook pro that I never updated beyond Mojave, I’m about to purchase the M2 macbook air. A few things I’m not clear about: I’ve been consistent about cloning my laptop to two different external hard drives and alternating one off site but not sure if I’ll be able to continue doing that with my new laptop w/o some extra massaging of the external hard drives. For example, will I need to erase the external hard drives and reformat them because Mac OS is now 16 bit and using different file format? Not a big deal, but I’m curious if that will be necessary. If I am able to continue using my old external drives it looks like I will at least need to buy some new cables since they use USB-A and the new macbook air is USB-C. I’m also guessing that I’ll need to buy a new printer too because my Canon printer is old enough that they don’t still offer driver updates. Even though I listen to MPU regularly I’m a power user only in my mind.
I think you meant to say “MacOS is now 64 bit…”
I don’t think you have to erase and reformat the drives but that’s the fastest way to get them ready for your new machine. Certainly you don’t want to erase and reformat before you get what you want off of them - like your user files.
Since your new machine only has Thunderbolt/USB-C ports you might want to look into a “dock” that has USB-A ports. You can search the forum for some others’ experiences with those.
You may have to get a new printer (or you may want to get one) but before you do you could just plug it into the dock and see what happens.
Yes, I did mean 64 bit. Thanks for the feedback!
Also I personally would prefer to NOT use migration assistant with older system like you have and setup the new computer clean - from scratch.