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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#91

Post by aborsy »

nosianu wrote: post #44
RedShift1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you got downvoted, you're right. Many models that are currently on sale as new models have CPUs that are 10 years old.

There must be more than that, another explanation, if they are slow. Ten year old CPUs were plenty fast already, far more than enough even, to power an NAS device. My Windows 11 often takes many seconds to start some application (Sigil, Excel, whatever), and it sure isn't the fault of the CPU, even if it's "only" a laptop model (albeit a newish one, released December 2023, Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 3800 (max 4800) Mhz…

Another factor related to speed is that, they didn’t allow using NVMe slots for storage pool until recently for new models (in 920+ still you can’t do that; even if they allowed it, the limited PCI lanes of that CPU would limit the throughput). So a container’s database has to be stored in mechanical HDDs. Again other companies moved on, and I remember there were a lot of community dissatisfaction and hacks, until they improved the situation.

Their hardware is limited already, and they also artificially limit it further by software.

They changed course now, and allow using any HDD. Will DSM display all relevant SMART attributes? We will see!

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#93

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

Too Late. Synology and Unity are learning a very hard lesson. When you screw over your customers, then reverse course, it often causes long term damage because people got a chance to see your true behavior and feelings towards your customers.

And if you did it to us once, you're capable of doing it again. To me personally, the "Synology" brand is permanently tarnished. For them to do what they did signals serious moral problems with their decision makers, and the entire move sounded desperate for profit. Just type "alternative to synology nas" and you'll get a whole bunch of options.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#94

Post by RedShift1 »

nosianu wrote: post #44
RedShift1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you got downvoted, you're right. Many models that are currently on sale as new models have CPUs that are 10 years old.

There must be more than that, another explanation, if they are slow. Ten year old CPUs were plenty fast already, far more than enough even, to power an NAS device. My Windows 11 often takes many seconds to start some application (Sigil, Excel, whatever), and it sure isn't the fault of the CPU, even if it's "only" a laptop model (albeit a newish one, released December 2023, Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, 3800 (max 4800) Mhz…

You are correct that the software should perform better, but I don't think the average buyer understands this - they buy a new (and sometimes quite expensive) device, yet it feels sluggish for them, so they feel like they bought a bad product.

But even in the more business/enterprise segment you're getting screwed over. Let's go to the product selector here: https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products?product_line=rs_plus... and look at XS+/XS Series subtitled "High performance storage solutions for businesses, engineered for reliability." Let's pick the second choice, RS3621xs+. According to the Tweakers pricewatch (https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/1656552/synology-rackstation...) this thing went on sale the 8th of February 2021 (4 years ago). The specsheet says it has an Intel Xeon D-1541, let's look at what ARC (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/91199/i...) has to say about this CPU:

Marketing Status: Discontinued

Launch Date: Q4'15

Servicing Status: End of Servicing Updates

End of Servicing Updates Date: Saturday, December 31, 2022

I'll let you make your own conclusions if that's an OK purchase these days.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#95

Post by numpad0 »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #10

I'm pretty sure Synology does not manufacture hard drives. So you can't buy 3rd party HDDs --- but Synology can? Looks likes a blatant FU to the customer was returned in kind.

This is actually not that rare. Enterprise server vendors always carried exorbitantly priced third party HDDs in plastic shells effectively as brand merches. But servers are contractor managed and/or severely discounted, so no perceivable harm is usually done.

The differences here are that they actually implemented software checks, for devices bought at MSRP. And so harm is felt.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#96

Post by sschueller »

bayindirh wrote: post #64
Netcob wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same - replaced my smaller Synology with a UGREEN, put TrueNAS on it first thing, runs great. The HDD thing was only the final nail in the coffin, but before that, there were plenty of ridiculous "upgrades" that made products worse than in the previous generation. Literally removing features, or continuing to use the same outdated hardware. That's what companies do that don't think they have competition.

ASUSTOR's latest gen hardware is ridiculous. Ryzen processors, upgradeable ECC RAM, 4xHDD + 4xNVMe, 10GbE plus a PCIe slot... You need to add an external GPU for TrueNAS installation, but they have an official video for that. On top of that, they connected the flash which stores the original firmware to its own USB port, and you can disable it. Preventing both interference and protecting the firmware from accidental…

ASUSTOR looks interesting but none of their desktop units appear have PCIe expansion slots so you can't put a SFP28 card in there. It might be possible via expensive USB4 adapter.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#98

Post by jchw »

saaaaaam wrote: post #50
jchw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think continuing to buy Synology is likely a mistake: not only have they not even properly apologized for this insanely bad anti-consumer decision, it's merely one of many over the past few years. (I speak as an 1819+ owner.) If you're not interested in running your own, I think the most promising option is the UniFi UNAS which is due to be shipping soon (edit: Already has actually. A new model is due to s…

I was under the impression that the Unifi UNAS is just a dumb storage array without any of the ecosystem of apps that a lot of Synology users seem to like - the photos app, being able to run Plex, etc.

That's correct AFAIK, but software like Plex and Jellyfin work just fine if you store your media on a separate machine. For the price gap between the Synology NAS and the UniFi UNAS you could buy a cheap machine to run some workloads on over the network. Even better since the UNAS has very good connectivity out of the box (10GbE) that I figure it will basically always be bottlenecked on the HDD speeds anyways. Maybe a Raspberry Pi or small form factor computer could be sitting above the NAS. Many of us already run Home Assistant OS anyways, and if you don't... It's never too late to start :)

I am not a current UNAS owner though, so I don't know how well this will go. However, I am willing to make a gamble on Ubiquiti lately. The UniFi line always felt like decent products to me, but lately it feels like they've hit a good stride and just released some pretty solid good value products. I was fully expecting enshittification with the UniFi Express line and instead they gave home users great value and no forced cloud account garbage. I don't personally use all of the UniFi products, but I frequently recommend them and it's rarely been a let down. I think the UNAS still has a lot it needs to prove, and adding support for Docker workloads would go a long way to making their offering have more parity with Synology's, but even without it, it is challenging to ignore how much better of a deal you're getting for the core functionality for sure.

I of course hope people do some level of research before buying things based on Internet comments of course, but I think this could be a good way forward for a lot of people. I do acknowledge Synology DSM has a lot of stuff built in, but frankly most of it just isn't that great.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#99

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

aborsy wrote: post #7

But their hardware is also terrible. Their disk stations for consumers had 1G NICs until recently, and still underpowered CPUs. The sales had to decline for them to be convinced to upgrade to 2.5G in 2025. But then they removed an optional slot for 10G in 923+ model (they still would have made money from it, as it costs +$150), so when the industry moves to 10G, you can’t upgrade the component and should buy the whol…

I've had a couple of Synology drives for many years (DS1520+, DS918+). They've always worked fine (still chugging away).

I have had terrible luck with Drobo.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#100

Post by AndroTux »

numpad0 wrote: post #86
nicce wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change Synology with HP, NAS with printer and HDD with ink cartridge. How does that sound like?

Printers don't take standardized cartridges. I think that was their mistake. They should have started with model specific HDD cartridges. Or just expanded models with USB enclosures.

> They should have started with model specific HDD cartridges.

But that’s exactly what they did. Just in software.

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