Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

guru3d.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 679 posts

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#331

Post by reactordev »

pdimitar wrote: post #266
reactordev wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm uncertain of why $40 vs $300 is even a point of debate on HN. The latter is a one-time investment and you likely can expand it a bit i.e. add a 2.5" or M.2 drive later. What's the gain of running 12 RPi, exactly? Do you do research work requiring distributed low-cost computing?

I do distributed computing, and doing it at home for low costs without cloud spend helps…

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#332

Post by lobsterthief »

baobun wrote: post #34
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?

The printer market is a cartel with everyone pulling the same bullshit. DIYing an affordable and performant printer is out of reach for the individual. Printer ink is not a commodity otherwise. Consumers don't really have alternatives. Desktop NAS market is very different.

I don’t think it’s a cartel per se; that would require collusion to keep ink prices high.

What seems to have happened with the 2D printer market is a race to the bottom to provide customers with the cheapest printers possible while hiding the high [recouped] costs of the ink. Many consumers are duped into buying a cheap printer and not realizing the high cost of printing that comes with it.

This is why brands like Brother have been able to succeed, especially pushing their laser printers: higher upfront hardware cost and cheaper ink.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#333

Post by makeitdouble »

behnamoh wrote: post #317
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 p…

There is a time span between the policy is comitted internally and the time that policy is reverted. In Synology's case it's probably more than half a year, in other companies it could take a full year or more to reverse course.

Half a year is plenty enough to move away.

Of course people don't like looking for a new job, but they don't like shitty leadership either. And speaking of paying the bills, you won't get much of a bonus or promotion when profits are plunging, so moving away earlier than later is usually a good idea.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#334

Post by layer8 »

Fischgericht wrote: post #321
layer8 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about the changed actual policy deployed with DSM 7.3, that only just started rolling out. Your link hasn’t been updated in over two months, so doesn’t reflect that yet. Edit: Updated KB article is here: https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/Drive_compatibili...

Because I am no longer sure people are all getting shown the same content for that URL, here is what is shown to me (no local caches or proxies): Hard disk drives (HDD) & M.2 NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) Series Details FS, HD, SA, UC, XS+, XS, Plus, DVA/NVR, and DP Only drives listed in the compatibility list are supported.

Here is the updated KB article (note “en-us” vs. “en-global”): https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/Drive_compatibili...

In particular: “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. While Synology recommends using drives from the compatibility list for optimal performance and reliability, users retain the flexibility to install other drives at their own discretion.”

NASCompares confirms that no warnings are shown: https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/1o1a32m/testing_s...

I agree that the information is still a bit muddled right now.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#336

Post by jerf »

potato3732842 wrote: post #226
mixermachine wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about run-of-the-mill HDDs here with SATA 3 (2005) and SMART (<2000) interface. No product is perfect but these interfaces are very well tested and billions of machines run as expected with them. The move from them was purely for money reasons.

Based on my experience dealing with SFPs I highly suspect they looked at their bug tracker and concluded that 13% of the sketch-ass mystery drives were causing 50% of their labor expenditure. And by "issues" I mean highlighting all the little cases where they had a) coded to spec with no ability to handle out of spec but foreseeable if you're cynical (which the fresh out of school junior engineers who typically wind…

This is 21st century American business. Synology wasn't going to choose their drives for maximum reliability after a long, hard, and most importantly expensive benchmarking period, they were going to stuff the cheapest drives they could buy from suppliers in there and charge more than any other drive. There's a very reasonable chance this would have produced lower quality outcomes and more support calls in the long run than random drives purchased on the open market.

Yes, this is absolutely deeply cynical, but my priors were earned the hard way, you might say.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#337

Post by al_borland »

rolleiflex wrote: post #276
coisnepe wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 P…

> I just pay Apple for iCloud monthly, I consider that to be money well spent.

I use iCloud Photos for my photos, so I don’t have to manage storage on my phone, while always having access to everything. I quite like it.

I also have a Synology NAS for other things.

A little voice in the back of my mind is telling me to also backup my photos to the NAS, because I have no idea how Apple is backing things up. I might be willing to pay for 3 copies for just my photos, but is Apple going to do that for all users of iCloud without advertising it? Probably not.

I’m not sure the best way to go about doing an initial backup to the NAS, or the ongoing changes. I think it also gets a bit messy with Live Photos… which is another reason why iCloud Photos is so appealing, if it can be fully trusted.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#338

Post by reactordev »

mrob wrote: post #257
reactordev wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The RPI CM5…

The specs claim "ECC" [0], but give no further details. ejolson on the Raspberry Pi forums [1] thinks it is on-die ECC, not traditional ECC, which would mean transfers between the RAM and the memory controller are not protected and there are no means of monitoring errors or triggering a kernel panic if there's an uncorrectable error. Some discussion on Reddit [2] also suggests it's on-die ECC. If this is true, it's b…

The chip is the memory controller…

Yes it’s on-die. Yes it has error reporting. Don’t spread fud. There isn’t a dedicated chip because there doesn’t need to be.

Broadcom BCM2712

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#339

Post by fortran77 »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #262
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…

My story is similar. I've been using them for a decade, and was shopping for an upgrade when they made the proprietary drive announcmement. It was the impetus I needed to realize that it only takes an hour to build my own, better, NAS out of junk I mostly already owned and save a ton of money. I won't be going back.

You can build a little hot-swappable NAS with nice trays to slide disks in and out, an easy web GUI, front panel status lights, support for applications like surveillance cameras, etc, with junk you mostly already owned?

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#340

Post by michaelsshaw »

calini wrote: post #57

HA HA HA HA HA I really hope the C-suite that decided this gets no bonus and hopefully a salary cut this year. Stupid, anti-consumer measures like this need proper consequences so they stop happening. Until then, let's keep boycotting companies with anti-consumer practices.

You obviously dont understand capitalism. They'll probably get an increase in bonus with company layoffs occurring.
Post reply on HN