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The Synology End Game

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Re: The Synology End Game

#11

Post by bayindirh »

I'm looking for a NAS for a very long time (budget, size, network, etc.), but when I was ready to pull the trigger on a Synology, they did this, and I dodged a bullet.

Long story short, I'll be buying an ASUSTOR AS6804T, and if I don't like the software, I'll just install TrueNAS on it. It's not only officially supported, they have a full length video showing the process. They don't provide tech support, but eh.

Icing on the cake? The eMMC storing the original firmware sits on its own USB port, so you disable that port, and both disable and protect the firmware from being overwritten.

If you want to return to original firmware, enable the port, remove the TrueNAS SSD, and viola!

Re: The Synology End Game

#12

Post by codeflo »

The year is 2025. Delivering a good product is not considered profitable enough anymore. If a company or product is beloved by customers then that means it doesn't squeeze them to the max. This is clearly money left on the table that someone will sooner or later extract. High-end brands are not exempt from this.

Re: The Synology End Game

#13

Post by theshrike79 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #2

Semi-OT: I currently have a QNAP TS-451D2. I use it mainly with a MacBook Pro. Something in QNAPs Samba implementation makes it glacially slow in that configuration. While it still does AFP (and then becomes somewhat decent to use), it's only a question of time for apple to chop that protocol. With QNAP having proven to be substandard and Synology going evil, what other options for a mid-range, local NAS for the tech…

A Jonsbo case and Unraid: https://nascompares.com/2023/09/01/jonsbo-n2-nas-build-with-...

The Jonsbo cases are pretty compact and QNAP/Synology-ish.

As for Unraid: You pay for it, so you're the customer and can expect some kind of support. It's also pretty damn stable and supports casual "I'll just add this drive to get more space" usage compared to ZFS stuff.

Re: The Synology End Game

#14

Post by mjg59 »

Synology are bad at technical restrictions. That doesn't help most people, and it's not any sort of defense, but anything they strongly attempt to impose here is going to fail. It took me an evening to break the protection they imposed on another layer, and a chunk of that evening was me and a bottle of mezcal and just writing INSERT statements into sqlite, we are really not talking about extreme competence.

But! That doesn't matter, most users are never going to be able to do that themselves, and DMCA protections potentially prevent anyone sharing knowledge of how to do so without putting themselves at risk. The truth is that vendors can, under US law, threaten anyone who tells someone how to make the device they bought work properly with federal offences. Buy something else instead.

Re: The Synology End Game

#15

Post by theshrike79 »

I had a 918+ that just... died. It started and then stopped, didn't POST.

Panicked, built a full-ass Fractal 804 case + Unraid setup to replace it.

Was looking around for That Guy who mails around a Synology box so I could get my data out and stumbled on a forum post(!) that said the external PSU just fails subtly sometimes. It gives enough power to start booting and then fails.

Bought a 3rd party PSU from Amazon and the Synology boots up.

Now the 918+ lives as an off site backup at my parents' house =)

Re: The Synology End Game

#16

Post by zer00eyz »

khanan wrote: post #5

Thing is, they used to be so good. I had a really tricky error, they had a tech help out during daytime, so guess he stayed up late to help us out and it was amazing customer support. They went FROM THAT, to me never touching their stuff again due to this (and the surveillance station-crap they pulled with yanking out codecs). They must've had a massive brainfart in the management at that company.

Do you know why I tell my loved ones to get apple products?

Because I don't want to support them.

Your telling me that Synology is giving out apple levels of support in trade for vendor lock in. It sounds like the sort of thing I recommend to others because it wont be my problem.

Go ask a "car guy" who has a civic or something that is LS swapped what car you should get. He's not going to recommend anything he is going to buy... he's gonna tell you to go get a bog standard Toyota so it isnt his problem. Meanwhile he has the fun, project car that does cool things but he's always fiddling with.

Synology isn't for you any more... They want to be Toyota or apple or something not for nerds!

Re: The Synology End Game

#17

Post by radicality »

DocTomoe wrote: post #2

Semi-OT: I currently have a QNAP TS-451D2. I use it mainly with a MacBook Pro. Something in QNAPs Samba implementation makes it glacially slow in that configuration. While it still does AFP (and then becomes somewhat decent to use), it's only a question of time for apple to chop that protocol. With QNAP having proven to be substandard and Synology going evil, what other options for a mid-range, local NAS for the tech…

Have you already tried tinkering with the smb settings on both the local and nas config like here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102064 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101442 https://gist.github.com/jbfriedrich/49b186473486ac72c4fe194a...

Re: The Synology End Game

#18

Post by bayindirh »

nness wrote: post #7

It's a real shame too, I had purchased a DS723+ before the announcement and its a great little machine. The I can see why the Synology experience was such a draw for so long in the consumer space. The recent HDD drama is death for Synology's consumer appeal, but I imagine they'll shape-out a mid-market/small-business segment for themselves.

They're probably "pulling a Rolex" i.e. Go big or go home move.

The thing is, the place they're moving a little dangerous. SOHO and SMB using 4-12 HDDs to serve a couple dozen people is a very small niche. Plus you can add professional photographers and videographers on top.

Then what? The upmarket is very, very crowded. Will they OEM their wares to big players as entry level devices?

Re: The Synology End Game

#19

Post by amiga386 »

On that very topic, do HNers have any case and/or motherboard recommendations for a homebrew NAS?

I have my NAS on a shelf in a mini-ITX case, but it only fits two 3.5" HDDs internally (as well as an SSD, but full-size HDDs are what matter for bulk data storage, the more the better)

Also, it takes a normal full-size ATX PSU because I was fed up a previous case that only had room for its own custom PSU, which kept failing under load. But I note there are now standardised small sizes like TFX12V and LFX12V, are there any efficient and reliable PSUs in these form factors?

Re: The Synology End Game

#20

Post by ramon156 »

bayindirh wrote: post #11

I'm looking for a NAS for a very long time (budget, size, network, etc.), but when I was ready to pull the trigger on a Synology, they did this, and I dodged a bullet. Long story short, I'll be buying an ASUSTOR AS6804T, and if I don't like the software, I'll just install TrueNAS on it. It's not only officially supported , they have a full length video showing the process. They don't provide tech support, but eh. Ici…

Does just getting an intel NUQ not suffice? i bought one for 180 and it works great. runnint ~16 apps + an MC server and no issues
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