Synology seems to further favor their “own” (re-labeled, Toshiba- and Seagate-produced) drives instead of the numerous other once which still appear in the official HCL like we knew it over the years, starting with the 25-Plus-models.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/Synology-restricts-choice-of-hard-disks-for-new-Plus-NAS-10356960.html
This project will probably become a lot more relevant:
What a shame, I really like my synology but it’s getting old. Guess it’s a home built nas next :/
I chose QNAP and the biggest reason was that I can open that bad boy to add RAM and a NVME to install whatever OS I want. i’m currently running openmediavault with no QNAP software. It feels nice imo.
I’ve had two QNAP NAS fail on me, never again. The first failed shortly after the 3-year warranty expired and was MSRP $600. The second failed right before warranty expiration with MSRP $1200 thinking a better unit would be less prone to fail, but alas.
Thankfully I was able to RMA to get my data back (proprietary RAID), and while waiting on RMA to return, built a custom TrueNAS server I can service all parts on myself for around the same cost of a new NAS. Sold the RMA unit on eBay to recoup some cost as well. All I ever ran on those units was Plex and Samba\NFS file shares. Never again.
Do you have external access to the drives with the TrueNAS or are they internal?
Is that really an alternative though? I bought a synology because I don’t want to spend hours and hours configuring shit, only for it to break after an update. I fiddled around with proxmox, truenas etc. But it’s a hassle. I absolutely believe that DIY is the way to go if you have the time for it though.
I hate what synology is doing and seeing where most companies are heading I’m pretty sure the enshittification won’t stop at using their own branded HDDs. But I just want a solution that works. As shitty as this move by synology is for me its still cheaper to spend 30 euros more on a drive and have a hassle free solution then screwing around with DIY solutions.
Please prove me wrong though… I’m trying to rid myself of big tech and have been pretty successful so far (linux, self hosting, no more streaming subscriptions etc.). If anyone knows of a better solutions that had synology drive like function and hyper backup like function with a minimal maintenance OS I’m all for it.
Just speaking for myself here, but as someone with only basic literacy in networking and almost zero prior experience with Linux or Docker, I found Unraid extremely straightforward to spin up–especially with the numerous guides floating around on Youtube. I started out with a used SFF PC that cost about $120 and a few drives I had lying around, and was up and running with basic NAS functionality in an afternoon.
I’ve mucked up a few things trying to do something more advanced without fully reading up, but I haven’t had a single hiccup with Unraid itself.
1.5 years later, and I’ve got ~80TB worth of refurb enterprise drives and hosting several media and other storage services, and I don’t see myself outgrowing it anytime soon.
Hoping better options emerge out there
I’ve beeen a Synology user for a long time, but their practices have become more and more anti consumer as time has gone on. To go from DSM 6 to DSM 7 I was meant to buy all my security station license again. I downgraded again, it was painful.
Yeah, moves like this have convinced me that when I get another NAS box, it won’t be from them. It’ll probably built custom instead. After some quick searching, OpenMediaVault and TrueNAS seems like top runners right now. Hopefully it’ll be a while before I have to really consider it, though.
Unraid is pretty sweet as well!
I’m really glad I got my own hardware and run unraid on it.
That’s also my option for the next step and once my 1522+ is due to renewal on one day or the other. Which hardware do you use in your environment?
I got a zimacube since it has plenty of hdd slots and good enough hardware.
Enshittification knows no bounds
It’s a shame because I really like the point and click nature of DSM. Although I’m a happy Linux hacker I don’t want another Linux box to suck up my limited admin time just to store files.
OpenMediaVault is really good for that. The only times I’m ever really in its command line is when I’m checking for certain files.
I can only speak for Unraid, but I would imagine admin time is basically nil for any dedicated NAS distro if all you want is to store files. <10 minutes from scratch to install and boot, create an array and enable a share.
Does anyone know what the underlying filesystem is on DSM? The ability to easily replace disks with a degree of redundancy across the 4 bays is the biggest plus point for Synology although I have no doubt all the bits underneath are the Linux storage stack.
Filesystem is either EXT4 or BTRFS, but the partitioning and redundancy from their SHR system is a combination of RAID1/5 and LVM.
mine is btrfs, ds1618+
that probably does not have redundancy
I can lose 2 drives.
Why?
I don’t support this decision in any way, but I can at least think of some legitimate motivation for it (assuming the Synology branded ones aren’t marked up from the equivalent Seagate/Toshiba ones). I imagine Synology has to deal with a lot of service calls and returns for issues that are caused by shoddy drives (like those Seagate drives with the fudged lifespan numbers), not by anything that they can directly control.
In reality, the above was probably what sparked the idea, but I’m betting that they’re going to jack up the price of those drives just to squeeze out a little more profit for this quarter.
They could’ve just had approved disks and a one time warning when not using them that performance may be degraded and that you wouldn’t get support for questions related to it.
