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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#451

Post by beAbU »

StillBored wrote: post #437

This is a mixed bag. As someone who worked in the storage industry for ~10 years, there are a lot of poorly defined behaviors that are vendor/model specific and I can see how its easier to just pick a particular model, test it and declare it the blessed version having done similar stuff myself. Ex, SMART attributes, mode sense/caching behaviors, etc. Which can all be used in conjunction with RAID to determine when a…

So initially I wanted to give you a knee-jerk response about how Synology could have gone with a warning rather than an outright ban. Then I read the article...

It seems that this was never an outright ban, but non-blessed drives either generated a warning or they had reduced functionality. What TFA fails to mention is what this "reduced functionality" is.

If it's something like RAID rebuilds take longer because other drives might not have the requisite SMART attributes or some other function that's required is one thing. But halving the drive speed just because it's not a Synology drive is another. This knowledge would put me in a better position to know if I should harshly judge them or not.

I think it's totally fair to raise a warning that a particular drive has not been tested/validated and therefore certain guarantees cannot be met. I can fully respect how challenging it must be to validate your product against a basically infinite combinatorial collection of hardware parts. I've learnt long ago that just because a part fits does not mean it works.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#452

Post by figers »

CharlesW wrote: post #446
figers wrote: post #313

What is a good alternative that allows me out of the box with no extra hardware to install a plex server, connect to Mullvad VPN and start / monitor downloads directly from the NAS device web interface or mobile App?

QNAP's QTS/QuTS Hero are generally as "batteries included" as Synology's DSM in that respect. I threw 32GB of RAM in my TS-464 and run ~15 containers (as well as Plex, not in a container) on it with no problem.

ah, thanks for the tip

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#453

Post by j45 »

turnsout wrote: post #369
geerlingguy wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point about ZFS. Having more than one copy helps too. ECC is great when possible.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#454

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

procaryote wrote: post #386
nottorp wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you use a couple of magnetic disks, the pi is fast enough. The disks will be the bottleneck. There are sata cards that allow up to four magnetic disks, and where you power that card which in turn powers the pi. It's very doable. It's of course more work to set up than synology, and if you want a neat box, you have to figure that out yourself

So long as the storage system is capable of serving a video stream without stuttering, that covers the 99% performance case for me. Anything beyond that is bulk transfers which are not time sensitive.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#455

Post by bitdivision »

dagmx wrote: post #415
bitdivision wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did have a bug that corrupted images on import I think? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45274277 So maybe don't fully trust it.

You’re talking about completely different aspects of the product though? The second top level comment also suggests that this the cameras manual suggests the camera itself might be corrupting things.

Sure, it's a different part of the product, but still worrying that it may have happened at all.

Looking at it further though, you're right, this probably wasn't apple's fault.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#456

Post by CharlesW »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #426
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 went with a UGreen NAS a couple of months ago specifically because Synology had added this restriction. It's been a happy decision so far. When reading up and watching videos for what I should get, everything pointed at Synology as being the "Apple of NAS products." But everything I looked at showed they were coasting on their status and had actively worsened their products in recent revs.

Oh, so they are the Apple of NAS products. /s

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#457

Post by j45 »

ryandrake wrote: post #381
j45 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storage should be a home appliance, not critical stuff to maintain and manage. The ability to hot swap a drive when it needs replacement without a disruption to one's life is what a NAS is for.

I feel like hot swap is great if you work in a datacenter, but in order to be a useful benefit in a home setting, you have to have new, replacement hard drives sitting around on a shelf somewhere. My RAID alarm went off about a year ago warning me that a drive was failing, and I had to place an order and wait a week. Plus, the amount of time it took for the HW RAID controller to rebuild the new drive, I probably coul…

I don't need my data offline when it doesn't have to be.

You don't need extra drives sitting around. When one fails, you buy one, Amazon can have it over in a day, or local shops. If it's not realistic for that, having one spare isn't a bad thing.

If you replace with a larger capacity drive, the existing raid only uses the same size to keep the raid.

Depending on the drives you are using, SMR technology can take much much longer to rebuild a raid than CMR.

Self-storage should be like a cloud - people need to rely on it like a cloud provider. Hot swap is a negligible cost over the 5-10 years you keep a NAS.

Hot swap chassis whether it's one you buy or a Synology/QNAP, etc is the way to go. Hot swap used to cost a ton, it's considerably come down market.

Storage is like a home appliance for me, just because I could build a stove doesn't mean I should. I've spent enough time swapping hard drives manually and powering off gear to know that I don't care for it if I don't have to anymore.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#458

Post by xd1936 »

julcol wrote: post #76

After 17 years I dropped Synology recently. I sold my 2 NAS. Company changed focus. Did not like the walled garden and old linux base. I moved to a second hand beefed-up laptop and a terramaster disk pack connected vi USB. Same wattage. It does take some effort, but now it is done. I like to tinker anyway. I pulled up Proxmox with a bunch of containers doing SMB/SNF per share. Just like with Synology, I just look a r…

Plus, a built-in UPS!

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#459

Post by j45 »

mrob wrote: post #326
j45 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ECC is very helpful. Having used both, I can't help but notice how NAS' routinely run just fine without it.

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

Multiple backups.

How many files have you personally seen gone corrupt on non-ecc?

ECC originated first out of server grade servers. Self-hosting rarely hits that level of demand.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#460

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

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,…

" i'm guessing lack of innovation also plays a big part."

Totally. Whenever a company runs out of ideas they pull BS like this to increase profits.

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