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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#271

Post by Uvix »

mort96 wrote: post #193
yason wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Customer-Support is usually happy to have a clear-cut criteria to reject > support-requests as "officially out-of-scope". All they needed was criteria at which point they can tell their customers "Please test if this reproduces with genuine Synology drives, and if they do we'll file an internal bug to fix your issue."

At that point, you have essentially made it a policy already that you only support Synology-branded drives.

“We only support Synology-branded drives” would have gone over a lot better, because we could have used non-symbology drives without support. Instead they actively prevented non-Synology drives from working.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#272

Post by somehnguy »

reactordev wrote: post #245
pdimitar wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people love Pi-s so much. They filled a niche, once, years ago, and were quickly outcompeted not even a year and a half after. Get some old i7 or Ryzen, get a big case, put 12-18 HDDs, spend a little extra on quality cooling solution if you have the server in your bedroom / living room, install modern Linux, tinker to your heart's content.

Because for $40 I have a system that runs at a decent speed. For $300 I could get an ITX to run. So for the cost of an ITX, I could run a dozen RPIs. Who wants to have a server running in their bedroom? Have you heard the noise those things make? Sorry, no.

A “server” doesn’t need to mean a pizza box with 15k rpm jet engine fans.

My server is repurposed desktop hardware in a desktop tower case and is nearly silent except for the subtle hard drive noises. The hardware cost next to nothing and is far faster and more capable than any pi (except the pio of course which wouldn’t be used anyway).

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#274

Post by mort96 »

Uvix wrote: post #271
mort96 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point, you have essentially made it a policy already that you only support Synology-branded drives.

“We only support Synology-branded drives” would have gone over a lot better, because we could have used non-symbology drives without support. Instead they actively prevented non-Synology drives from working.

It would have been way better than what they did, I agree. However, it would've been pretty shitty from a user perspective still. I'd be pretty angry as a customer if customer support just refuses to help me with anything unless I buy Synology-branded drives.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#275

Post by hoistbypetard »

pdimitar wrote: post #216
deelowe wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can a pi achieve the same iops? I'd be highly suspecious of any such claims.

I don't know why people love Pi-s so much. They filled a niche, once, years ago, and were quickly outcompeted not even a year and a half after. Get some old i7 or Ryzen, get a big case, put 12-18 HDDs, spend a little extra on quality cooling solution if you have the server in your bedroom / living room, install modern Linux, tinker to your heart's content.

> I don't know why people love Pi-s so much. They filled a niche, once, years ago, and were quickly outcompeted not even a year and a half after.

They still fill a niche for me, just not a server niche. The easy-to-access GPIO in a close-to-vanilla Linux system really doesn't have a competitor at its price point. For a fourth grade science project last winter, I had a pi 4 already (but it'd have been about $40 at my local microcenter if I hadn't). We were able to source a few $2 sensors off Amazon. I showed her how to look up the pinouts, figure out which GPIO pin to connect the dupont connectors to, and helped her write a python program to log the data from the sensors to a spreadsheet. She had fun with it, learned some stuff, and it really sparked her interest.

I don't think anyone has outcompeted them in accessibility for that kind of tinkering and learning. Or, if they have, they haven't caught my attention yet, and I've usually got my eyes open for that kind of thing.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#276

Post by rolleiflex »

coisnepe wrote: post #240
8fingerlouie wrote: post #162

The decision to restrict 3rd party harddrives may be part of the reason why sales (allegedly) plummet, but i'm guessing lack of innovation also plays a big part. Synology has been resting on the laurels for years. They had a "hit" with DSM 6, then did mostly nothing for a decade, released DSM 7, and again, nothing but minor things since. On the hardware side of things, they're mostly still using decade old hardware,…

As someone else mentioned here, I'd wager a large part of Synology customers were people who'd have had the technical ability to setup their own NAS server but didn't want to bother, instead electing a "setup and forget" solution. I know that's who I was when I bought my first Syno DS several years ago. A few months ago I realized I'd outgrown it so I looked into the next Synology solutions, and all I saw were overpr…

Similar, but slightly different story for me. I ended up buying it as an enthusiast ‘Apple-grade’ product where UX was there to do something I would be able to do on my own. Then they got high on their own supply and started to believe they can be as restrictive and up charging as Apple, forgetting that they’re still a product for primarily fairly technical people.

Also, for all server needs I’m running a Raspberry Pi at a single digit fraction of the ongoing power use of my Synology, and it just no longer makes sense to have this weird rare platform as my base when I could just be running things on Debian and systemd.

More philosophically, life got busy, and I no longer have the mental capacity and willingness to maintain something like a Synology. The only large content I back up are my family’s photos and I just pay Apple for iCloud monthly, I consider that to be money well spent.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#277

Post by InTheArena »

My 918+ was a huge step up from my homebrew homelab server. People who advocate for a duct tape solution for systems that contain their entire lives on their disks are doing most people a disfavor. Having a well baked disk and backup storage system is critical.

I switched a year ago to Ugreen UNAS just given the generational leap of their hardware and reasonable per-disk pricing over synology.

I didn’t trust you agree with OS, but that ended up being incredibly easily remedy by just shoving true Nas on the system.

All that sad if I had waited another half-year, I wouldn’t have gone down that path but instead would’ve picked up a UniFi NAS, which is even more optimal from a cost and integration into my ecosystem. Since that really is just network attack storage - I could just let my old Home lap server act like a server on top of a NAS.

The lessons from this are many. First is that hardware is not a moat. Thanks to china that’s no longer a factor. The second is that software isn’t a moat anymore either. Synology leveraged Linux and then walled garden their solution and decided to not innovate. Now open source and in the future AI have made it so software is significantly cheaper to work with.

That means we are back to loyalty and brand awareness. Both are things that synology has squandered with this adventure.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#279

Post by kristofferR »

mlrtime wrote: post #188
aranw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://cwwk.net/collections/nas/products/cwwk-eight-slot-10... (NAS-N150-8P)

That + a Jonsbo N2 is a great option, it's what I run.

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