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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#181

Post by lobsterthief »

ffsm8 wrote: post #101
zeroflow wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with you. The appeal for me was the "it just works" factor. It's a compact unit and setup was easy. Every self-built solution would either be rather large (factor for me) and more difficult to set up. And I think, that's what has kept Synology alive for so long. It allows entry level users to get into the selfhosting game with the bare minimum you need, especially if transcoding (Plex/Jellyfin) is men…

Surprising to read your take Transcoding was the reason I moved away from Synology. The rest was fine , not great but ... Okay But there was no way to improve transcoding performance. If a stream lagged, it would always lag. Hence I jumped ship and just made my own

I bought an inexpensive used Mac Mini and attached a standard HDD USB3 enclosure to it with multiple drives. Works great for streaming to any network appliance I want to use.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#182

Post by jacquesm »

hsjsjdnbdbdb wrote: post #117
anal_reactor wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've realized that at my current workplace it's a recurring theme that I suggest a solution, it gets rejected, we circle around for a year, finally we go back to my solution. It is indeed extremely demotivating, because it gives me an impression that I'm working with stupid people. I don't want to leave the company, but I'll try to switch teams next year.

Sounds like you don't argue hard enough

That seems to be a rather short-of-support conclusion based on the evidence available.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#183

Post by mlrtime »

jchw wrote: post #87
kimixa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"successful" boycotts always have a weird decision afterwards, as you want them to be "rewarded" in reversing course, but still cost them enough to not be worth trying things again next time. And it feels like for most of these companies it's a whack-a-mole of cycling from which happened to burn you last rather than any actually being fundamentally "better". Pretty every alternative mentioned in this thread have rele…

At this point I'm not suggesting a boycott at all, I'm placing a vote of no confidence in Synology. There is no reason to believe they've had a "change of heart" on their mentality, they're not stopping due to backlash, they're stopping because their greedy scheme failed . If they can figure out one that works, is there any reason to believe they won't take it? Go to the Synology website and browse to a NAS. Here's S…

I agree, two companies that I've dropped recently.

Synology: Switching to Unifi

Sonos: Switching to Wiim.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#184

Post by mlrtime »

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.

Synology photos is garbage... it does do one thing ok which is backup photos.

The software stack of usability is severely missing. So they have a lot of software that kind of works, but none of it well.

In that case I'd rather have the cheaper Unifi that only does storage.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#185

Post by throw0101a »

b112 wrote: post #109
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…

Min/Max pricing theory? Selling 10 units at $10 profit is far far better than 100 units at $1.50 profit. Maybe even $2 per. Why? Because the more you sell, the more support, sales, and marketing staff you need. More warehouses, shipping logistics, office space, with everything from cleaners to workststions. Min/Max theory is exceptionally old, but still valid. So making a crappier product, with more profit per unit,…

This seems to be the model that Broadcom is going with VMware.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#186

Post by moffkalast »

AJRF wrote: post #48

They tried it though - remember that if you are ever trying to buy another. There are people at the company who wanted this and got greedy, and are only backtracking now because it negatively impacted them. Don't forgive them, and don't buy Synology.

"Synology fucks around and finds out, more at 11"

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#187

Post by chmod775 »

b112 wrote: post #109
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…

Min/Max pricing theory? Selling 10 units at $10 profit is far far better than 100 units at $1.50 profit. Maybe even $2 per. Why? Because the more you sell, the more support, sales, and marketing staff you need. More warehouses, shipping logistics, office space, with everything from cleaners to workststions. Min/Max theory is exceptionally old, but still valid. So making a crappier product, with more profit per unit,…

> So making a crappier product, with more profit per unit, yet having sales drop somewhat, can mean better profit overall.

This will never work in a competitive market like for NAS. The only thing that will get you higher profit margins is a good reputation. If you're coasting by on your reputation, sales and customer experience matter. Less sales one quarter means less people to recommend your product in the next one, which is a downward spiral. A worse customer experience obviously is also a huge problem as it makes people less likely to recommend your product even if they bought it.

They went for a triple-whammy here from which they likely won't recover for years. They now have less customers, less people who are likely to recommend their product, and their reputation/trustworthiness is also stained long-term.

Crappier products at higher margins only works if you're a no-name brand anyways, have no competition, or have a fanatical customer base.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#188

Post by mlrtime »

aranw wrote: post #19
closewith wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just want storage and not apps, Ubiquiti's UNAS line is a much better choice, especially if you're in their ecosystem.

Yeah UNAS is one option I'm exploring. But the only thing I'm wanting on top of all that is something like Plex or Jellyfin and I don't know how well it will play with a UNAS if running on a external server

A N100 or other type of cheap hardware will be much better than the synology.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#189

Post by potato3732842 »

osivertsson wrote: post #51

When leadership makes decisions that are so out of touch with their customers it also severely impacts internal morale. Yeah, so they reversed eventually. But the technical and support people at Synology probably tried to fight this and lost. That feeling of being ignored despite having given this company your everything for many years. I bet many woke up feeling that the magic that made Synology a good place to work…

I think it speaks volumes about the work ethic (or less charitably, moral character) of the HN comment section that so many people are bewildered as to why support would prefer to troubleshoot questionable hardware than tell people "fuck off and come back with supported hardware" all day. Unless you're a real POS doing that sort of work sucks way worse than actually working to solve people's problems even if the latter requires a few more brain cells. And it only takes the most casual contact with the support people in your organization to understand this. If the people answering phones and chats didn't actually want to solve people's problems they could make more money working at the DMV counter or selling time shares or whatever. The people this decision is bad for are the engineers who have to work marginally harder to write more robust code to work with hardware they can't necessarily get hands on in advance to test with.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#190

Post by squeedles »

One week too late for me. Didn't feel like scratch building a new machine and finding a low TDP mobo with a bunch of SATA ports. Wanted to go Synology but dragged my feet for months watching this play out.

In the meantime, I became enamored with the Jonbo cases and started seeing white label N100 ITX mobos pop up with a bunch of SATA ports. Eventually figured out they were Topton when Brian Moses included them (and a Jonbo case!) in this year's NAS build.

So my parts are arriving in a few days and Synology has lost one potential new customer.

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