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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#361

Post by dgacmu »

izacus wrote: post #234
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…

This is just another version of "why Dropbox when rsync" and equally silly.

It really isn't, though.

1) there exist viable commercial competitors providing approximately equivalent functionality

2) the roll your own solution with, e.g., TrueNAS, also provides equivalent functionality and is about 90% as easy.

I say this as someone who owns and manages three Synology boxes and one more recent TrueNAS box. There was a time when Synology offered something quite better than the alternatives, but that time is no longer.

My newest one (192TB) I bought the hardware pre-assembled and tested from a VAR, installed TrueNAS, and was off to the races. It cost more than buying the individual components would have, but it had zero headache and was cheaper than buying the equivalent amount of storage from Synology.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#362

Post by pixl97 »

mort96 wrote: post #274
Uvix wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

I mean, it gets really messy in hardware support.

Typically you'd want to tier it out

1. Fully supported drives: Synology branded

2. Support provided: Somewhat decent tested models that meet x features

3. Unsupported but works: list of drives

4. Does not work: list of drives.

There is no shortage of models of drives that do crappy crap that totally suck completely. Like lie about things going wrong in the drive. Or take a long break when dealing with failed sectors. Putting down a list of well supported drives is a must in that market. This said, only supporting branded drives sucks.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#363

Post by hnlmorg »

nottorp wrote: post #281
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…

For one rPIs are severely i/o limited still. May be fine with one ssd. For two, if you like power adapters going into boxes out of which usb cables to go more external hard drives, a Pi may be fine. If you want one neat box to tuck somewhere and forget about it, they aren't. But then people buy Intel "NUCs" where the power adapter is larger than the computer box... And three, the latest Pis have started to require ac…

> But then people buy Intel "NUCs" where the power adapter is larger than the computer box...

You say that like it’s a mystery why people by then but NUCs are fantastic little PCs.

The power adapter is just hidden under the desk whereas the NUC is sat on the desk (or behind the monitor/TV).

It’s the same as with Mac Minis and Apple TV. And other devices of that ilk.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#364

Post by turnsout »

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…

Yeah, just put together a TrueNAS system. Mine has been running for 10 years. Drive replacements and upgrades are so easy with ZFS.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#365

Post by Hikikomori »

zeroflow wrote: post #72
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…

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…

There's some DIY chassis that are pretty small like Jonsbo n2, great since you can upgrade CPU later on. https://blog.briancmoses.com/2024/11/diy-nas-2025-edition.ht...

Ugreen, aoostar and terramaster are also good alternatives.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#366

Post by bapak »

avianlyric wrote: post #315
bapak wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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 tur…

> it turns out

Correct. I never said that it was the right choice, I just said that it was a valid choice for them to make. Lots of companies substantially raise prices and still come up winning.

Netflix doubled their subscription cost since 2008, but market cap did 100x and subscribers are 30x. They even offer fewer good movies than they used to. You may still hate them, but their wallets don't care about your feelings.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#367

Post by ec109685 »

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…

Horowitz talks about this in-depth in “What you do is Who You Are.” There are waypoints in a company’s life that can change their trajectory and when you have the weight of employees, their family and company’s existence on your shoulders, it’s easy to compromise on a value like customer centricity. Your culture needs to be strong enough so that doesn’t happen.

https://a16z.com/books/what-you-do-is-who-you-are/

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#368

Post by wat10000 »

lupusreal wrote: post #174
rickdeckard wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I see where you're coming from, in my experience ESPECIALLY Customer-Support is usually happy to have a clear-cut criteria to reject support-requests as "officially out-of-scope". I wouldn't be surprised if the decision was made BECAUSE Customer Support highlighted the support-effort to debug all these unique customer-setups within warranty, and then someone stepped in and proposed to kill two birds with one st…

Customer support who are happy to leave customers high and dry and rinse their hands of the problem are basically soulless already; they care more about their own immediate convienence (while still on the clock!) than they do about the human being on the other end of the phone line. Now, it's probably inevitable that many of them will be this way, but what I'm saying is keeping these customer service reps satisfied w…

The cost of providing customer support is clear and easy to measure, while the benefit is nebulous. This leads to incentive structures centered around controlling costs. That means rewards for handling more calls, and thus punishment for taking too long on a call regardless of the merits. In such an environment, it is inevitable that the reps will care about their call times instead of the customer. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

If you empower customer service to actually provide service, they will. Shitty service isn't because of shitty reps, it's shitty incentive structures. They're not trying to cut down on support effort because they want to play solitaire, they're doing it because serving too many customers with difficult problems will literally impoverish them.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#369

Post by turnsout »

geerlingguy wrote: post #341
mrob wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>NAS' routinely run just fine without it. How do you verify your data to confirm that?

ZFS helps, and many people are okay with the risk of a cosmic ray causing a bit flip while data is in flight once in a blue moon. I currently manage four NASes (two primary, two backup replicas). Only one has ECC RAM. And I'm okay with my setup. ECC is great to have, but it is oversold by some as being absolutely required for all storage devices, IMO.

For truly important files (photos), I’ll take the slight added expense of ECC for a little more peace of mind that old photos aren’t being gradually degraded with every resilver or scrub.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#370

Post by xp84 »

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.

An ITX isn’t the competitor for a Pi. I’d suggest a USFF prebuilt. I use an HP Elitedesk and Dell and Lenovo each have similar tiny PCs. They’re nearly silent or completely silent, and half the size of a Mac Mini. Cost is about $150 for hardware that is more than enough for me, plus they can have 1-2 SSDs and a hard drive inside the case.
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