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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#551

Post by Subdivide8452 »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #545
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,…

>>> but i'm guessing lack of innovation also plays a big part. It's a NAS. It just needs to be reliable.

If you know what Synology is, you know it's more than just network based storage.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#553

Post by CamperBob2 »

jlarocco wrote: post #408
CryptoBanker wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source alternatives such as OpenMediaVault are able to support virtually any hardware. That's no excuse for a company like Synology

It helps that they can tell people to debug the problem themselves.

So can Synology. "I'm sorry, sir, but your XYZ drive doesn't appear on our list of recommended/supported drives. I'll need to refer you to XYZ Corp for this issue. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

That's all they ever needed to say. Instead, they said, "Fuck you, pay me."

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#556

Post by quickthrowman »

Aurornis wrote: post #371
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…

> 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…

I’m assuming it was Sonos, I know you can’t confirm but it fits pretty well. Hope you landed somewhere with management that isn’t stupid.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#557

Post by abetancort »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #496
lpcvoid wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. You buy a chinese case with 6-8 bays off Aliexpress, throw some board with ECC RAM support into it and a few disks. You install TrueNAS Scale on it, setup a OpenZFS pool. Front panel lights are controllable via Kernel [0], it even offers a ready-made disk-activity module if you want to hack. Surveillance cameras are handled by Frigate, an open source NVR Software which works really well. Especially when you wan…

Very valid advice, but you don't do all that in "an hour," of course. Synology's purpose in life is to provide a solution to users who are more interested in the verbs than the nouns. They are the Apple of the NAS industry, a role that has worked out really well for Apple as well as for most of their users. The difference is, for all their rent-seeking walled-garden paternalism, Apple doesn't try to lock people out o…

[dead]

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#558

Post by hedora »

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,…

Regarding lack of innovation: They still haven’t made the jump to NVMe.

They have things with two slots, which I guess is good enough for raid 1, but those models also have HDD bays, which wastes space in network closets.

I’d expect them to have something with 4-8 incredibly well-cooled m.2 slots by now. The nic is only 2.5G, so the slots wouldn’t need to be full speed.

I’m happy with my ancient 2TB synology NAS, but it’s bigger, slower, noisier and hotter than my mini-pc, which also has two (toasty) nvme slots.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#559

Post by kstrauser »

nathan_douglas wrote: post #465
kstrauser wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That surprised me, too. A while back they nerfed some feature in Video Station, their IMHO crummy Plex analog. Wow, did people ever get bent! Meanwhile, I didn’t know anyone actually used and liked it. It worked alright but the client apps were/are a giant leap behind alternatives for Plex or Jellyfin. But no, the built-in option seemed to have a league of fans in the Venn overlap of “people who want to stream video…

Weirdly, Audio Station is the best app I've found for streaming podcasts from my Synology (given the quirks of podcast hoarding in practice). Admittedly, I haven't looked in a few years... maybe I should get on that.

That seems plausible. I don't think there's as much competition among audio apps, and I (perhaps naively) suspect there might be a lower bar for UI polish. We were using XMMS back in the day, and while it looked cool, it wasn't the paragon of user-friendly design.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#560

Post by SoftTalker »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #412
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…

Do you think more employee ownership and control, a "seat at the table," would've prevented technically competent leadership from testing customer hostile business decisions? > Regarding employee morale: It was very depressing for me during this period to open Hacker News and see threads complaining about my employer. I can confirm that it spurred a job search for me. Indeed. I believe that if you're a shareholder em…

Not a fan of employee ownership. It's the antithesis of diversification. You're now depending on one company for both your salary and your investments.

Work for a salary. Invest in a diversified portfolio that's not tied to your employer.

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