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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#481

Post by setgree »

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…

"That feeling of being ignored despite having given this company your everything for many years" is a strong argument against giving a company your "everything." They'll cut you loose in a minute.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#482

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

kimixa wrote: post #27
jchw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think continuing to buy Synology is likely a mistake: not only have they not even properly apologized for this insanely bad anti-consumer decision, it's merely one of many over the past few years. (I speak as an 1819+ owner.) If you're not interested in running your own, I think the most promising option is the UniFi UNAS which is due to be shipping soon (edit: Already has actually. A new model is due to s…

"successful" boycotts always have a weird decision afterwards, as you want them to be "rewarded" in reversing course, but still cost them enough to not be worth trying things again next time. And it feels like for most of these companies it's a whack-a-mole of cycling from which happened to burn you last rather than any actually being fundamentally "better". Pretty every alternative mentioned in this thread have rele…

> "successful" boycotts always have a weird decision afterwards, as you want them to be "rewarded" in reversing course, but still cost them enough to not be worth trying things again next time.

I wouldn't want a company to be "rewarded" for reversing an anti-customer decision, but instead they should be made to realise that their customers goodwill can disappear and be very difficult indeed to be won back.

However, most consumers aren't aware of these kinds of issues/boycotts, so most companies don't get to reap the full impact of shitty decisions.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#484

Post by CamperBob2 »

fortran77 wrote: post #339
mapontosevenths wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

... and "it only takes an hour?"

LOL, clearly an amateur. That's longer than it took me to build Dropbox. /s

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#485

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#486

Post by gosub100 »

kstrauser wrote: post #372
j45 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, not really. They already have a compatibility page of known-good drives and they recommend people stick to it. They could also have an incompatibility list showing known-bad drives, and alerting if you install one of them. If I put junk tires on my Toyota, I don’t blame Toyota. But if Toyota used that as an excuse to make it impossible to use third party tires, I guarantee you my next car purchase wouldn’t have…

Your Toyota analogy doesn't hold up. If a customer puts SMR into their NAS, they are absolutely going to call Synology and complain. And they are going to have to re-explain this over and over because most people don't understand nascent HDD writing modes the way they do a vehicle tire. Even then, and appropriate analogy would be a tire that is cheap and new but refuses to spin above 25mph vehicle speed.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#487

Post by Aurornis »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #404
Aurornis wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is interesting here is that Synology leadership is quite technical Vagueposting out of necessity: I worked at a different company that made popular consumer products and had leadership with technical backgrounds. That company also went through a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, which everyone hated. The root cause was that the technical leadership had started to think two things: That th…

> a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, .... their customers were so loyal to the brand that they wouldn’t leave Isn't that a contradictory position? Locking in raises the cost of disloyalty, loyal customers (by definition) don't need to be locked in. You only need to lock in loyal customers if you are planning on turning customer hostile.

> Isn't that a contradictory position? Locking in raises the cost of disloyalty, loyal customers (by definition) don't need to be locked in.

In this case, the customers were loyal to Synology for the NAS but not the hard drives.

By locking them in further, they thought they could capture their customers' hard drive purchasing, too. They thought the brand loyalty would allow it.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#488

Post by dymk »

delecti wrote: post #316
leokennis wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As for the ancient Linux kernel, I want the device I’m using for backups to be secure. I’m not saying I need to be using the kernel on ~main, but there are important security fixes merged in the last 5 years.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#489

Post by jacquesm »

grues-dinner wrote: post #434
Aurornis wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is interesting here is that Synology leadership is quite technical Vagueposting out of necessity: I worked at a different company that made popular consumer products and had leadership with technical backgrounds. That company also went through a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, which everyone hated. The root cause was that the technical leadership had started to think two things: That th…

> Can you believe that? They’ll buy anything we tell them to. Sounds very much like "doing a Ratner": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner

Or a Zuck.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#490

Post by gosub100 »

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…

This kept me from buying one too. One of the models I considered would make me choose between an M.2 cache OR a 10gbe nic. I didn't know they are plastic now either. It's a shame, I really want to like them. I also heard it some "bootleg" OS you could install over DSM but not sure what it's called. Synology were trying to silence it iirc
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