Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs • Hacker News Board

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#571

Post by hadlock » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

pabs3 wrote: post #311

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…

Can you run a standard Linux distro on them? Is their OS custom or based on OpenWRT or something else?

Nope, the purpose of a Synology unit is to be about as complex as a toaster. Put it on the shelf, plug it in, make sure auto-updates are enabled, and forget about it until it sends you an email in 5-10 years that one or more drives is full/failing. I bought a synology almost 10 years ago and it's been purring away in a closet somewhere and never causing problems the entire time.

If you want a device to tinker with, this is the wrong product for you.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#572

Post by recov » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

lousken wrote: post #555

MINISFORUM N5 series look like it totally destroys whatever synology has on the market. Also if you don't like their software, you can install whatever you want on it. Why bother with synology?

This is what I did - microcenter sells it now. Wiped the drive and installed fedora and more ram. Such a great deal for the hardware you get

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#573

Post by Hikikomori » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

croon wrote: post #548

Hikikomori wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a Terramaster DAS as I already had a NUC, just connected with USB, supports 10Gbit but my NUC only does 5. Looked a lot at NAS alternatives and ugreen, asustor, aoostar all seem pretty good, as you can just run truenas or a linux distro. Can also do DIY chassi with mini itx board.

I checked out Terramaster too, but was unsure of the interface. Does the HBA do any abstraction or is it IT mode and direct access to the disks?

This guy talks about it at 3:30

https://youtu.be/ZdEqEWiA2CE?si=ILPrTNBsZMqgcBNJ

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#574

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #498

volkl48 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most people consider easy hot-swaps + front panel status lights particularly key features in their home NAS. I don't swap drives unless something is failing or I'm upgrading - both of which are a once every few years or longer thing, and 15min of planned downtime to swap doesn't really matter for most Home or even SMB usage. ----- As for the rest, TrueNAS gets me ZFS, a decent GUI for the basics, the ab…

Hot swap for drives is a must on a NAS. If you have to power it down to swap out a drive there is a chance that your small problem becomes a larger one. Better to replace the drive immediately and have the NAS do the rebuild without a powercycle.

If you're worried the hard drives won't spin back up, I'd say you should instead spin them down regularly so you know that risk is basically zero. If you're worried the power supply will explode and surge into the drives when you turn it on, you should not be using that power supply at all. Any other risks to powering it down?

And for the particular issue of replacing a failed drive and not wanting to open up the case while it's powered, you can get a single drive USB enclosure to "hot swap" for $20. And if you use hard drives you should already have one of those laying around, imo.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#575

Post by wat10000 » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #569

wat10000 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of companies support products that work with third-party components. It's not realistic for them to support those components. The standard approach is to support the aspects they can control, and the customer is on their own for problems that involve the third-party component. Your phone won't charge? Is that our charger? No? Try one of ours. It works with ours? OK, our job is done, go talk to the company that…

> Plenty of companies support products that work with third-party components. Exactly. And they typically help you with issues even if you do use third-party components. > Your phone won't charge? Is that our charger? No? Try one of ours. That's not really how it works. If I have tried 5 third-party USB-C chargers of different brands, and they all charge all other USB-C devices perfectly but not my phone, my phone ve…

That really depends on the company. Comcast would tell me to reboot my computer even after it was clear their modem wasn't getting a signal. Any decent company will help you out if you've made a good case that the problem is on their side, as in your example. But if your phone only fails on one charger made by somebody else, and works otherwise, they're not going to help you fix the charger.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#576

Post by whatevertrevor » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:45 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #519

jacquesm wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power consumption is a major draw (pun intended) to keep Pis and other SBCs of that kind of form factor employed.

Valid, thanks. But to what degree? The light bulb that runs 18h a day in the kitchen likely draws the same power that my mini form factor Optiplex 3060 does. To me arguments like "2W vs 10W" are fairly meaningless. I am much more concerned about data center power usages, especially in the age of LLMs. Like that ancient German teacher I had that kept preaching we should stop using electric kettles because it's bad for…

Wait how did she suggest people heat water for tea/coffee instead? I've never heard an environmentalist attack electric kettles before.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#577

Post by Dylan16807 » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

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.

Does that $40 include everything to make the Pi work?

After looking at lots of small board options, I got a NUC for $110 to be the brains of my NAS.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#578

Post by 8fingerlouie » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

qmmmur wrote: post #566

8fingerlouie wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple uses a mix of Google Cloud and AWS, as well as their own data centers. As for Google and AWS, they are using multi geographic redundancy, and I can only assume they do that for their own data centers as well. The data in the 3rd party data centers is encrypted. That means, at least for Google and AWS, that your data is being stored with redundancy not only in a single data center, but in multiple data centers,…

I just backup the entire photo library with kopia. Is that as good as what you do?

It depends.

Do you use iCloud optimized storage, or do you download originals to your machine ? Kopia only backs up what it can see, and in case of iCloud optimized storage, it only backs up size optimized miniatures and not the original files.

Second, I haven’t researched this, but iPhoto used resource forks and extended attributes quite extensively for its library, and if the same is true for Apple Photos, Kopia will not pick up those, but Arq will. That was the very feature that caused me to purchase Arq all those years ago.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#579

Post by phoenix3200 » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #493

phoenix3200 wrote: post #475

Six years ago my box shit the fan. Synology could have recovered it for me, but they insisted I "upgraded" to their newest box. That was when I realized that I would never buy from them again. Thank goodness their hybrid raid is at least MDRAID. https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/d3cmq2/ds1512_tha... Honestly, old server equipment is more powerful than most of these RAID boxes. The only caveat there is that o…

I don't understand. Recovered how? As far as I know, like many electronics companies, they don't do repairs period. If an enclosure fails under warranty, they replace it. They don't repair it. So if your NAS motherboard died out of warranty and they no longer sold that model, it's not surprising they recommended you buy the current version of that model. So I don't know what you were expecting? Hardware dies. What di…

As best as I could understand, the hardware wasn't dead. It was "soft bricked" due to no fault of my own. And they wouldn't stand behind their product and instead insisted I upgrade to a newer and less capable product.

No, I wasn't expecting replacement hardware. I was expecting support for a product that they were still releasing software for.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#580

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Oct 08, 2025, 6:48 PM UTC

If you're looking for a really good alternative: Supermicro makes large chassis that will hold a fair number of drives (I have one that will take drives). They're usually sold cheap on ebay and other such sites when they're written off. If you're willing to replace a couple of fans and do your own software installation they're unbeatable for value-for-money, and they last just about forever. I've still got two Synology diskstations with 12 bays each and one extender. But the Supermicro is far more powerful and seems much more reliable and better engineered, even if it isn't as easy to set up. The downside of the Supermicro chassis is that they're not really made for residential use, they're pretty loud. But other than that redundant power, lots of CPU and RAM for caching.