HOW To EXPAND YOUR APPLE SYSTEMS Storage & BOOST Your audio and video production!

do you want to know how to store and work with your files directly from the desktop saving money and time ? We did it!

Introduction

Finally found a good solution to work with large audio and video files on Mac avoiding to buy new Apple devices due to internal disc memory problems.
We noticed that purchasing a Mac Mini or any other apple device with the minimum disc space capacity, the device, after a short period of time, the device would begin downloading and applying updates to the operating system and therefore the available disc space would get significantly reduced up to totally blocking the functionality of the computer.
Furthermore, the files managed by Apple's Audio & Video production suites such as Final Cut Pro X, Logic Pro X, Compressor, MainStage 3 and Motion were encoded inside the machine as projects and therefore they take up a lot of storage space. 
About a month later, with the native memory of Mac Apple, you have no space left to do your works.
Doing an internal memory upgrade on Machintosh HD, for a simple Apple device like Mac SSD, would mean PAYING more for this operation than the cost of Mac itself (In detail you should have to replace the logic board of the Mac and insert a memory for example TBs SSD with higher cost).
We found many problems on the possibility to implement an official technical upgrade on the SSD memory, despite we had contacted Apple Inc.

Mac mini 2018 SSD

WD My Book Duo

DON'T DO IT

HDD or SSD external drives are not the right way to expand Apple internal capacity, and the result isn't the one you would hope for to have a single desktop integrated system.
Trying to expand the Apple internal storage drives with external HDD or SSD drives is a very uncomfortable and antiquated way.
Think about making a project with other producers and you're not able to find Sound Libraries, Recordings and MIDI Files.
This would make you waste a lot of time, your collaborators would start to evaluate your lack of professionalism on the management of your projects, even if you don't want it to happen.

We have the solution, follow the steps below.

The Solution

STEP 1

So, an exterenally attached Raid system (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) can be used in RAID 0, Raid 1, JBOD mode to save your data starting from a capacity of few TeraBytes up to 28 TB and even more.
This model system we tested connects directly to your Mac through with the latest Thunderbolt (Usb Type-C 3.1 interface generation) and with older generation too.
It transports data at high speed, so now you can work with Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro X, directly from your storage system and YOU CAN SAVE AND WORK ON YOUR APPLE BASED VIDEO AND AUDIO APPLE PRODUCTION DIRECTLY ON THE WD MY BOOK DUO.
You can free library space on the internal macintosh hd moving the native Apple program library to Your RAID DESKTOP STORAGE.
Thanks to the high speed connection through fast data exchange, it is possible to work on Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro X projects WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS through your mac.

Raid systems are the best for working externally because unlike single external hard drives, they are secure systems password that can be associated, but above all, it is a secure system for data protection and redundancy.
Data protection on RAID systems is ensured for many years, also having dedicated assistance directly on the product.

STEP 2

If you want to work directly with the files from the RAID, it is advisable to purchase a Desktop RAID system with a thunderbolt connection, if you only want to backup your data or make it available online, it is advisable to buy a RAID Cloud system with an Ethernet connection to your LAN but without a thunderbolt connection and therefore without being able to work on your files with same speed as direct attached disks.

So, if you want to combine backup, speed, instant work, Desktop RAID systems are the best!
You can choose whenever you want how to set them as RAID 0, RAID-1, JBOD. Pay attention as data loss in changing the configuration.
These systems guarantee efficiency and continuity even if a disk becomes damaged when used in RAID-1, so you will always have a ready backup of all data (recovery depends on the amount of disks in the RAID-1 configuration).

WD My Book Duo

WD My Cloud EX2

WHY RAID?

RAID 0

In the RAID 0 configuration Data is striped across multiple hard drives, enabling accelerated reading and writing of data by combining the work of two or more drives to increase performance.

RAID-1

In RAID 1 configuration two instantaneous copies of the data are recorded on separate hard drives so if one of them fails, the other(s) continue to read and write data until the faulty hard drives is replaced.

JBOD

JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) the use of one or more drives not in a RAID configuration but managed as separate logical volume.

RAID-1 CONFIGURATION IS RECOMMENDED FOR ARCHIVING AND WORKING ON IMPORTANT WORKS PROJECTS OR MASTER FILES 

Work Directly and safety

RAID-1

The RAID 1 system, also called mirror, maintains an exact copy of all data on at least two disks. It usually gets used for redundancy which is valued as more important than the total disk storage capacity. 
For a system with “n” number of disks it is possible to resist the failure of one disk member only without causing data loss ( Raid rebuild required). The total amount of space is n-1 instead. Reliability increases proportionally to the number of  disks inside the system.

At a performance level, the RAID 1 configuration typically increases the results for reading operations, because many implementations are able to perform several operations in parallel: while a block reading is still in progress on a disk, it can execute the read on another disk. 
A single reading operation is required initially and simultaneously on all the disks, but it ends at the moment of the first response received. 
Conversely, the writing speed drops to that of the slowest disk, because this type of action requires the replication of the same information to be performed on each member disk.

As you can see at the photo, system WD My Book Duo can be integrated with two WD Red NAS Hard Drives, to have the maximum capacity allowed (28 TB).
- Low implementation cost.
- High performance in writing and reading, thanks to the parallelism of the I / O operations of the member disks.