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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#311

Post by pabs3 »

cm2187 wrote: post #209
jacquesm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting here is that Synology leadership is quite technical and there was no acquisition or other big event that I am aware of that resulted in this strategy. It was a complete own goal and as predictable as could be. Synology apparently wasn't aware of what their brand values were as perceived by their loyal customers and that's the kind of move you make at your peril. I'll be surprised if they survive t…

I don’t know if their brand is that great. I have been using synology NAS for about 15 years. It is very solid and easy to use, but the hardware is expensive, non customizable, the underlying OS is based on an ancient linux kernel. I have now run into the volume size limits (200TB) and disk sizes keep increasing exponentially. And they don’t support enterprise SSDs (SAS/U.2). So in my mind I was already thinking of m…

Can you run a standard Linux distro on them? Is their OS custom or based on OpenWRT or something else?

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#312

Post by Fischgericht »

j45 wrote: post #307
Fischgericht wrote: post #264

NOT true. They have NOT fully reversed on this. Please read: https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/tutorial/Drive_compati...

Thanks for sharing. It seems like they want to make sure NAS' are running NAS grade drives, instead of consumer grade (SMR) drives which can have serious issues when rebuilding an array after a drive failure. Customers buying inappropriate drives for NAS and then eventually blowing back on Synology, if a driver of this could be handled differently.

Just commented here to point out that this news story spreading is wrong (and that other IT news outlets have since corrected/retracted it), don't have any eggs in that basket, but:

Discussions on their reasoning happened back when they introduced the extortion fees. No, it's not about NAS grade drives. They are just re-labelling existing NAS drive models, putting their own sticker onto it. The original manufacturers identical NAS drive model is then listed as incompatible.

There is nothing remotely connected to actual technology involved in this story at all. This is a sales-strategy-only subject.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#314

Post by throwaway173738 »

dangus wrote: post #212
reactordev wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to use a synology device anymore with RPI’s having sata shields and other SoC boards that are readily available that run Linux. Yes, Synology was easy but so is the decision to not ever use them again…

Another way to put this is that Synology misjudged their customers' appetite for alternatives. The ease of use of the Synology solution was always a plus of the product, but Synology misjudged the values and abilities of its core customer. They also misjudged the rapidly maturing market of competitors (e.g., why am I buying a Synology instead of UGREEN?) Their core customer always had the ability to set up their own…

I can confirm that I bought a Synology NAS because I didn’t want to tinker with the backup system for my family’s data. And when I read about the drive requirements for a new Synology NAS I decided that tinkering might not be such a bad thing. They really screwed up.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#315

Post by avianlyric »

bapak wrote: post #236
leakycap wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies exist to make profit. They can only make a profit if people are willing to buy what they're selling > Their business is selling hard drives. Then either they or you are confused. They make the NAS, not the drives. The drives are interchangeable and upgradable, that's the whole point of a hot-swap NAS system. > I bet a large portion of profits come from that I think they wanted a large portion of profits t…

> > Their business is selling hard drives. > Then either they or you are confused. They make the NAS, not the drives. No you are. You don't have to make something in order to sell it. Composing materials is a business. Selling packages is a business. You may choose to make your own bundles at home, some don't have the time and/or skill to do so. You're acting like this isn't normal business administration: companies…

> You may choose to make your own bundles at home, some don't have the time and/or skill to do so.

Well clearly enough of Synologys customers decided they did have the time to buy commodity HDDs and slap them into a competitors product, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

As GP said, Synology may want to believe they’re in the business of selling premium priced HDDs, with a side salad of NASs. But it turns out that isn’t a very sustainable business, otherwise there would be no reason for them change their policies.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#316

Post by delecti »

leokennis wrote: post #290
cm2187 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if their brand is that great. I have been using synology NAS for about 15 years. It is very solid and easy to use, but the hardware is expensive, non customizable, the underlying OS is based on an ancient linux kernel. I have now run into the volume size limits (200TB) and disk sizes keep increasing exponentially. And they don’t support enterprise SSDs (SAS/U.2). So in my mind I was already thinking of m…

I find Synology NAS's to be at the sweet spot between "too simple for anything except accessing some files remotely via the vendors app" (like WD) and "another tech babysitting project". DSM is rock solid in my opinion, and gives enough freedom to tinker for those that want to. The QuickConnect feature makes it easy to connect to the NAS without being locked in to one specific app.

Yeah, the GP comment doesn't seem to be their target market. You nailed the appeal though.

Non-customizable? That's the point. Ancient Linux kernel? I can't imagine why I'd care for such a device.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#317

Post by behnamoh »

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'm curious, do you know of examples of companies that lost their best engineers despite reversing course on a shitty policy?

My understanding is that people want to pay the bills, and esp. in this economy, most prefer to have a job rather than searching for a new one. That ofc is different for the more senior engineers who are in demand, but the junior ones will probably still stick around despite the management's policies.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#318

Post by Fischgericht »

avianlyric wrote: post #309
Fischgericht wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exec summary for those who think their time is not worth this evil madness: The only change is that they now allow you to use any 2.5" SATA SSD. Everything else, meaning: 2.5" SATA HDDs (the by far most common thing you would want to use) and NVME SSDs: Still a no-no. No, there was no lesson learned here by them at all. The liked article specifically is wrong here: "Third-party hard drives and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs" No,…

What are you talking about. This is a quote directly from the page you’ve linked to: > At the same time, with the introduction of DSM 7.3, 2025 DiskStation Plus series models offer more flexibility for installing third-party HDDs and 2.5" SATA SSDs when creating storage pools.

I do not know if we are getting served different content for the same URL. Content I can see, with server-side timestamp of 2 seconds ago:

Hard disk drives (HDD) & M.2 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) Series:

FS, HD, SA, UC, XS+, XS, Plus, DVA/NVR, and DP

Only drives listed in the compatibility list are supported.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#319

Post by WmWsjA6B29B4nfk »

Fischgericht wrote: post #282
Fischgericht wrote: post #264

NOT true. They have NOT fully reversed on this. Please read: https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/tutorial/Drive_compati...

Exec summary for those who think their time is not worth this evil madness: The only change is that they now allow you to use any 2.5" SATA SSD. Everything else, meaning: 2.5" SATA HDDs (the by far most common thing you would want to use) and NVME SSDs: Still a no-no. No, there was no lesson learned here by them at all. The liked article specifically is wrong here: "Third-party hard drives and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs" No,…

> DS Plus series (DSM 7.3): > HDD > Not Listed > Supported for: > New installation and storage pool creation

This is the main change. Other series (not Plus) are still locked down.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#320

Post by nicce »

rcxdude wrote: post #255
nicce wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop NAS market is very different. This was the first step or attempt to change that.

The thing is, you can't set up a cartel unilaterally. For this to work, they would need to get not only the other NAS appliance manufacturers on board (who clearly didn't and happily took the business that they were losing), but basically the whole PC and server hardware market. (I think some comments elsewhere in the chain got it right: they were calculating that they had enough brand lock-in and non-technical buyer…

> The thing is, you can't set up a cartel unilaterally. For this to work, they would need to get not only the other NAS appliance manufacturers on board (who clearly didn't and happily took the business that they were losing), but basically the whole PC and server hardware market.

I understand the point, but HP's approach was not really based on cartel, while it might seem so.

In the beginning, HP had great printers, and they used specific kind of ink. Back in that time, ink wasn't so complicated, so other manufactures started to sell it as well. So there was a moment, when you could get the ink from many different manufactures.

But what changed, was that HP started to make their printers accept only very specific kind ink, which was controlled by the printers and HP, not by the ink manufacturers (compare to HDDs).

They added one sort of digital signatures for the ink, so that printer reads signatures and does not otherwise accept it. So it does not matter whether these was cartel or not; it was just DRM lock-in. As long as the core product was desirable enough. I don't think this is a cartel in a traditional sense, because manufacturing of the ink cartridges wasn't that difficult otherwise, and it wasn't forbidden or highly regulated area.

In Synology's case, this was just that they added similar checks for NAS. It does not matter if other manufacturers don't comply with, if core product is good enough. Synology thought that their product was good enough to play this, but apparently not.

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