**A Power User's Review: Essential Accessories for Video Editing and Mac Mini Setup**

As a power user, I've had my fair share of experiences with various accessories that have revolutionized my workflow. In this article, I'll be sharing my personal experience with three essential accessories that have made a significant impact on my video editing work.

**OWC Drives: A Game-Changer for Video Editing**

I recently purchased an OWC drive, which has been a game-changer for my video editing work. The OWC team is fantastic, and their technician helped me narrow down the problem with my previous device. They couldn't fix it over the phone, so they sent me another one, which has been great. I love it - it's perfect! If you do a lot of video editing or are in the business of storing data (whether it be photos, videos, or anything else), I highly recommend investing in an OWC drive. My only recommendation is to get at least 24 terabytes of storage space. I was initially skeptical about this size, but with the amount of content I handle on a daily basis, I can confidently say that this drive has been worth every penny.

**The M1 Mac Mini and Thunderbolt Dock: A Perfect Combination**

I've also recently upgraded to an M1 Mac Mini, which has been a revelation. The combination of the M1 chip with Thunderbolt is perfect for those who need fast data transfer speeds. However, I realized that I needed a specific dock to make the most of this technology. That's when I discovered the OWC Thunderbolt Dock and RAID Enclosure. This device is a beast! It comes with USB-A, USB-C, SD, and Mini-SD slots, as well as a display port and power outlet. The fact that it's so versatile has been a game-changer for me. I no longer have to use separate docks or enclosures for each of my devices.

**SoftRAID: Simplifying Data Organization**

One of the most significant challenges I faced was organizing my data. With so many files scattered across different devices, it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage them. That's when I discovered SoftRAID, a software that comes pre-installed with the OWC Thunderbolt Dock and RAID Enclosure. This software makes setting up a raid configuration incredibly easy. Even as someone who doesn't have any server administration experience, I was able to set it up myself. The user interface is intuitive, and the documentation provided by OWC is top-notch.

**Essential Accessories for Everyday Use**

As someone who works from home, I've had to adapt to a new reality where I need to be productive with minimal distractions. For me, three essential accessories have been crucial in helping me stay focused:

* **MX Master Mouse and Keyboard**: These are my go-to peripherals for any project. The MX Master is incredibly versatile, and the keyboard is perfect for typing out notes or meeting minutes.

* **Universal Receiver**: This accessory has simplified my workflow by allowing me to connect both my mouse and keyboard to a single device using Bluetooth 5.0 technology. It's amazing how much less cluttered my workspace looks with fewer cables.

These accessories have revolutionized the way I work, and I'm excited to share them with you. Whether you're a power user like myself or just looking for ways to improve your productivity, these essential accessories are worth considering.

**For You: Essential Accessories for Everyday Use**

What about you? Have you been working from home recently? Are there any essential accessories that have helped you adapt to this new reality? Do you work as a student, gamer, or freelancer? What accessories have you found indispensable in your workflow?

If you're interested in learning more about the OWC Thunderbolt Dock and RAID Enclosure, SoftRAID, MX Master mouse and keyboard, or universal receiver, be sure to check out our playlist of accessories for Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and other cool Macs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni really like the m1 mac mini you've all seen all of the videos i've made but today we're going to talk about the three most essential accessories that you can buy to get the most out of that computer or really any apple m1 computer so what are they let's find out i don't have anything to slam what's up everyone i'm the everday dad if i can figure it out you can figure it out so these accessories are no kidding i could not exist i could not get my work done on a daily basis without these three things so when i say they're essential or whatever exciting title i come up with to draw you in that hopefully drew you in uh these like i can't live without these so throughout the course of the day there are three things i'm really probably doing with my time if i'm working at my desk and on my computer i'm either doing my nine to five day job as a product manager for software development company i'm either making youtube videos so i use my mac mini for that or i'm playing wow classic and i've been using a windows laptop for that so that's three computers and i don't like you can see the picture here where i used to have three separate keyboards to make that function well i don't like doing that i just want one keyboard one mouse and one display so we're going to start with all of the accessories that kind of make that happen so you've seen my keyboard and mouse before these are not new this is the logitech mx keys and the logitech mx master 3. these are not i mean they are essential because i use the keyboard and mouse every day but you could do this really with any mouse and keyboard combination so it's not necessarily the mouse and keyboard that's the important part it's these other parts now we're going to go smallest to biggest and the smallest one this can you even see this this is a logitech unifying receiver now i do count this as a separate accessory because if you do buy a logitech device like the keyboard or the mouse sometimes you'll get a receiver but it's not always the unifying receiver this little gadget here will take in several different devices so just because the keyboard and the mouse can pair via bluetooth separately and they absolutely can like you can see here the mx master keys can do one two three devices all by itself the mx master three can do the same thing however because the accessories in the way that remember this has to all go into one monitor we have to use the unifying receiver now check and make sure that if you are going to buy a logitech device that the little gizmo you get is the unifying receiver because i did have to buy this separately because there are ones that only work for their specific mouse their specific keyboard this one it was like 14 or 15 bucks it will work with any logitech device you just have to go in and download their unifying software and then you will be able to pair your devices to this thing it's it's incredible this is probably the linchpin of this entire setup it's everybody's going to be like gary just look at that it's just a little thing it's just a little accessory you don't even like how is that the linchpin i'm telling you and i've gotten comments before when we've talked about logitech devices that all devices come with these check first because they don't all come with the actual unifying receiver so the next thing we actually have to plug this into something right so i want the keyboard and the mouse i mean we could set that up that those three connections could be the three separate computers right i could set one two three but i don't like doing that through bluetooth sometimes there are some issues with m1 max and bluetooth connection issues so i don't want to go that way that's why we're going the wireless way and to get the three devices into one i'm using a kvm switcher this is from a brand called amos so all i have to do is i plug this into the slot and now i've got the mouse and keyboard are going into this thing now what this does though is it gives you a hardware hub of up to four devices so you can see here on the back we've got usb and hdmi and we got four different options you've got one two three four up here in the front and the way you switch is you just press the little button here so normally you would plug in your keyboard and your mouse separately maybe you could plug in two other usba devices you can turn it on turn it off here but then you plug in the hdmi from your computer and then it goes out to the monitor you can see right here output and it's so great all you have to do is you're sitting at your desk you're doing all your work because i work an awful lot and now i've got my mouse my keyboard paired through the receiver i just hit a button okay now i'm on my other computer pop now i'm on my other computer it just it's so easy and it has cleaned up my desk an awful lot i'm that's not a joke that nightmare picture on twitter is not a joke that's actually what my desk used to look like when i was trying to switch between all three kinds of devices and so it's i'm telling you it's a little pricey i will put the price of what i paid for this up on top but it's so good it says here it will support up to 4k 60 so if you have a fast refresh monitor you might not get the most out of it for this if you are trying to do a lot of gaming wow classic doesn't exactly need to go past 60 hertz for me so it does all that it says it's hdmi 2.0 compatible and 18 gigabits hdmi 2.0 kvm four and one switch you may not necessarily need to buy the one from amos but if you're trying to clean up your desk make yourself a little more productive and you have multiple computers that need to fit into something the switch the switch the switch the switch okay so the next accessory this is essential for me these ones you know that's how we got the three computer setup going the other one so you've heard me complain an awful lot about the storage options generally when we do accessory videos i'll be like here's a little external solid state drive here's a little external spinning disk drive and i'll say hey you can use these they're great they'll fill up though you should never just have your data saved in one spot you should have redundant copies well the way to get redundant copies is to have a raid enclosure and so here's the raid enclosure i've been using it's kind of heavy oh goodness it is heavy or maybe i'm just getting weak that's what happens when you get older so this is the owc thunder bay flex 8. now nobody something i should have pointed out in the beginning of the video is nobody is sponsoring this i paid for everything that we're going to talk about today nobody reached out to me there is no money nobody's sponsoring this video but this is the thunder bay flex 8 and what this is this is an 8-bit oh it's all gross because i actually use it i've been using it for the last month or so it's an 8-bay raid hard drive now you can set it up you can see here i've got one solid-state drive in here and the other seven are all spinning disc oh it's so dusty i need to get an air compressor in here they're all spinning disc hard drives now you can get this in a lot of big configurations you can see i've got seven by four terabytes in here and what this does is it lets me set up a 24 terabyte raid now one of these drives is pretty much lost in redundancy because what happens is you can lose one drive at any given time so let's say one of these drives fails on me i can then go buy another one and put it in here and i will not have lost any data and that's really great because i want to make sure that i don't lose any data if a drive fails i've had drives fail in the past and you don't want that like oh my goodness all of my data is gone what am i what am i going to do what then you're in trouble right so this thing what i really like about it is just how easy it was to set up how easy it was to build i just ordered it on the owc website it came pre-installed i did have one show up and there was a problem with one of the drives i called owc and their technician helped we kind of narrowed down what the problem was uh they couldn't fix it over the phone so they sent me another one um and this one has been great i love it it's perfect i'm telling you if you do a lot of video editing if you're not normally no i would not recommend 24 terabytes to somebody but if you have a business that involves storing data whether it be photo video anything out there um you owe it to yourself to stop working off of the c drives i'm look every youtuber that's watching this video i'm talking to you you may not need to buy something this expensive but stop only using lessee drives but there's another really cool thing about this and the reason i bought this one specifically we're always talking about m1 and thunderbolt right like m1 is great right it's got thunderbolt and thunderbolt is super versatile but what's great about this is this is like a combination thunderbolt dock and raid enclosure so you can see right here guys so dirty i'm sorry i'm sorry you can see right here it's actually got a lot of the stuff that i used to need a specific dock for it's got usba usbc sd and mini sd and then on the back oh you can see here it's so heavy and then on the back here you can see we've got display poured out we've got the power we've got a big fan it keeps the whole thing cool it's not overly loud but when you are using an m1 mac mini that makes no noise this is so much louder than the m1 mac mini we've got the 15 watts out and we've got the 85 watts out now the 85 watts out is the one that will plug into your computer and then be the data transfer back and forth between them but i love this thing this has been so great i no longer edit off of my sd cards what i'll do is all of the files from the videos like the video we're making today i just dump them into a work file on here and then i do all of my editing from here so my m1 mac mini is clean i don't keep any files on it anymore everything is in here and i work off of this and it's just it's been the best one of the things that i've been trying to get better and better at is my data organization there are nas solutions you could use like network attached storage that will let you set up your own basic server i didn't want that i just wanted something that i could plug into the thunderbolt port and it would have all of my stuff on it and this has been great it will also come with a piece of software called soft raid that will walk you through the setup procedures because the way i ordered mine it came everything was already set up everything was already ready to go when i did have to they sent me the new shell though i had to install everything myself but it's super easy setting up the software aid i'm not a server admin i'm not an i.t person i'm a project manager i basically try to help the team not fail and not get in the engineer's way all the time so if i can figure this out you know somebody else could figure this out too right i love it i highly recommend this if you are in the market for a big storage solution so these are the three essential accessories that i need on a daily basis to get my work done again i have three computers i gotta be able to use one mouse one keyboard and one display between them that's why the switcher is amazing i really like the mx master keys and the mx master three mouse and i like having less wires on my desk so i need that unifying receiver to take the signal from both of those and get it over to my computer and i have terabytes of video files that i need to store and then be able to edit and process and save for archival purposes when i need them in a future video and this this has been amazing and sometimes you need a doc when you have a thunderbolt computer that may not have a lot of i o built into it so these are absolutely my three essential accessories but what about you if you've been working from home if you're a student if you're a gamer what are some essential accessories that you've been looking at over the past few months that have helped you kind of adapt to the new reality that we all seem to exist with where we all just work from our house basically forever i guess and if you like this video and you want to see some more cool accessories for the mac mini the macbook air any of those cool macs that i very much enjoy you can find a whole playlist of those by clicking right here click click click click click click click thanks for watchingi really like the m1 mac mini you've all seen all of the videos i've made but today we're going to talk about the three most essential accessories that you can buy to get the most out of that computer or really any apple m1 computer so what are they let's find out i don't have anything to slam what's up everyone i'm the everday dad if i can figure it out you can figure it out so these accessories are no kidding i could not exist i could not get my work done on a daily basis without these three things so when i say they're essential or whatever exciting title i come up with to draw you in that hopefully drew you in uh these like i can't live without these so throughout the course of the day there are three things i'm really probably doing with my time if i'm working at my desk and on my computer i'm either doing my nine to five day job as a product manager for software development company i'm either making youtube videos so i use my mac mini for that or i'm playing wow classic and i've been using a windows laptop for that so that's three computers and i don't like you can see the picture here where i used to have three separate keyboards to make that function well i don't like doing that i just want one keyboard one mouse and one display so we're going to start with all of the accessories that kind of make that happen so you've seen my keyboard and mouse before these are not new this is the logitech mx keys and the logitech mx master 3. these are not i mean they are essential because i use the keyboard and mouse every day but you could do this really with any mouse and keyboard combination so it's not necessarily the mouse and keyboard that's the important part it's these other parts now we're going to go smallest to biggest and the smallest one this can you even see this this is a logitech unifying receiver now i do count this as a separate accessory because if you do buy a logitech device like the keyboard or the mouse sometimes you'll get a receiver but it's not always the unifying receiver this little gadget here will take in several different devices so just because the keyboard and the mouse can pair via bluetooth separately and they absolutely can like you can see here the mx master keys can do one two three devices all by itself the mx master three can do the same thing however because the accessories in the way that remember this has to all go into one monitor we have to use the unifying receiver now check and make sure that if you are going to buy a logitech device that the little gizmo you get is the unifying receiver because i did have to buy this separately because there are ones that only work for their specific mouse their specific keyboard this one it was like 14 or 15 bucks it will work with any logitech device you just have to go in and download their unifying software and then you will be able to pair your devices to this thing it's it's incredible this is probably the linchpin of this entire setup it's everybody's going to be like gary just look at that it's just a little thing it's just a little accessory you don't even like how is that the linchpin i'm telling you and i've gotten comments before when we've talked about logitech devices that all devices come with these check first because they don't all come with the actual unifying receiver so the next thing we actually have to plug this into something right so i want the keyboard and the mouse i mean we could set that up that those three connections could be the three separate computers right i could set one two three but i don't like doing that through bluetooth sometimes there are some issues with m1 max and bluetooth connection issues so i don't want to go that way that's why we're going the wireless way and to get the three devices into one i'm using a kvm switcher this is from a brand called amos so all i have to do is i plug this into the slot and now i've got the mouse and keyboard are going into this thing now what this does though is it gives you a hardware hub of up to four devices so you can see here on the back we've got usb and hdmi and we got four different options you've got one two three four up here in the front and the way you switch is you just press the little button here so normally you would plug in your keyboard and your mouse separately maybe you could plug in two other usba devices you can turn it on turn it off here but then you plug in the hdmi from your computer and then it goes out to the monitor you can see right here output and it's so great all you have to do is you're sitting at your desk you're doing all your work because i work an awful lot and now i've got my mouse my keyboard paired through the receiver i just hit a button okay now i'm on my other computer pop now i'm on my other computer it just it's so easy and it has cleaned up my desk an awful lot i'm that's not a joke that nightmare picture on twitter is not a joke that's actually what my desk used to look like when i was trying to switch between all three kinds of devices and so it's i'm telling you it's a little pricey i will put the price of what i paid for this up on top but it's so good it says here it will support up to 4k 60 so if you have a fast refresh monitor you might not get the most out of it for this if you are trying to do a lot of gaming wow classic doesn't exactly need to go past 60 hertz for me so it does all that it says it's hdmi 2.0 compatible and 18 gigabits hdmi 2.0 kvm four and one switch you may not necessarily need to buy the one from amos but if you're trying to clean up your desk make yourself a little more productive and you have multiple computers that need to fit into something the switch the switch the switch the switch okay so the next accessory this is essential for me these ones you know that's how we got the three computer setup going the other one so you've heard me complain an awful lot about the storage options generally when we do accessory videos i'll be like here's a little external solid state drive here's a little external spinning disk drive and i'll say hey you can use these they're great they'll fill up though you should never just have your data saved in one spot you should have redundant copies well the way to get redundant copies is to have a raid enclosure and so here's the raid enclosure i've been using it's kind of heavy oh goodness it is heavy or maybe i'm just getting weak that's what happens when you get older so this is the owc thunder bay flex 8. now nobody something i should have pointed out in the beginning of the video is nobody is sponsoring this i paid for everything that we're going to talk about today nobody reached out to me there is no money nobody's sponsoring this video but this is the thunder bay flex 8 and what this is this is an 8-bit oh it's all gross because i actually use it i've been using it for the last month or so it's an 8-bay raid hard drive now you can set it up you can see here i've got one solid-state drive in here and the other seven are all spinning disc oh it's so dusty i need to get an air compressor in here they're all spinning disc hard drives now you can get this in a lot of big configurations you can see i've got seven by four terabytes in here and what this does is it lets me set up a 24 terabyte raid now one of these drives is pretty much lost in redundancy because what happens is you can lose one drive at any given time so let's say one of these drives fails on me i can then go buy another one and put it in here and i will not have lost any data and that's really great because i want to make sure that i don't lose any data if a drive fails i've had drives fail in the past and you don't want that like oh my goodness all of my data is gone what am i what am i going to do what then you're in trouble right so this thing what i really like about it is just how easy it was to set up how easy it was to build i just ordered it on the owc website it came pre-installed i did have one show up and there was a problem with one of the drives i called owc and their technician helped we kind of narrowed down what the problem was uh they couldn't fix it over the phone so they sent me another one um and this one has been great i love it it's perfect i'm telling you if you do a lot of video editing if you're not normally no i would not recommend 24 terabytes to somebody but if you have a business that involves storing data whether it be photo video anything out there um you owe it to yourself to stop working off of the c drives i'm look every youtuber that's watching this video i'm talking to you you may not need to buy something this expensive but stop only using lessee drives but there's another really cool thing about this and the reason i bought this one specifically we're always talking about m1 and thunderbolt right like m1 is great right it's got thunderbolt and thunderbolt is super versatile but what's great about this is this is like a combination thunderbolt dock and raid enclosure so you can see right here guys so dirty i'm sorry i'm sorry you can see right here it's actually got a lot of the stuff that i used to need a specific dock for it's got usba usbc sd and mini sd and then on the back oh you can see here it's so heavy and then on the back here you can see we've got display poured out we've got the power we've got a big fan it keeps the whole thing cool it's not overly loud but when you are using an m1 mac mini that makes no noise this is so much louder than the m1 mac mini we've got the 15 watts out and we've got the 85 watts out now the 85 watts out is the one that will plug into your computer and then be the data transfer back and forth between them but i love this thing this has been so great i no longer edit off of my sd cards what i'll do is all of the files from the videos like the video we're making today i just dump them into a work file on here and then i do all of my editing from here so my m1 mac mini is clean i don't keep any files on it anymore everything is in here and i work off of this and it's just it's been the best one of the things that i've been trying to get better and better at is my data organization there are nas solutions you could use like network attached storage that will let you set up your own basic server i didn't want that i just wanted something that i could plug into the thunderbolt port and it would have all of my stuff on it and this has been great it will also come with a piece of software called soft raid that will walk you through the setup procedures because the way i ordered mine it came everything was already set up everything was already ready to go when i did have to they sent me the new shell though i had to install everything myself but it's super easy setting up the software aid i'm not a server admin i'm not an i.t person i'm a project manager i basically try to help the team not fail and not get in the engineer's way all the time so if i can figure this out you know somebody else could figure this out too right i love it i highly recommend this if you are in the market for a big storage solution so these are the three essential accessories that i need on a daily basis to get my work done again i have three computers i gotta be able to use one mouse one keyboard and one display between them that's why the switcher is amazing i really like the mx master keys and the mx master three mouse and i like having less wires on my desk so i need that unifying receiver to take the signal from both of those and get it over to my computer and i have terabytes of video files that i need to store and then be able to edit and process and save for archival purposes when i need them in a future video and this this has been amazing and sometimes you need a doc when you have a thunderbolt computer that may not have a lot of i o built into it so these are absolutely my three essential accessories but what about you if you've been working from home if you're a student if you're a gamer what are some essential accessories that you've been looking at over the past few months that have helped you kind of adapt to the new reality that we all seem to exist with where we all just work from our house basically forever i guess and if you like this video and you want to see some more cool accessories for the mac mini the macbook air any of those cool macs that i very much enjoy you can find a whole playlist of those by clicking right here click click click click click click click thanks for watching\n"