Synology’s telegraphed moves toward a contained ecosystem and seemingly vertical integration are certain to rankle some of its biggest fans, who likely enjoy doing their own system building, shopping, and assembly for the perfect amount of storage. “Pro-sumers,” homelab enthusiasts, and those with just a lot of stuff to store at home, or in a small business, previously had a good reason to buy one Synology device every so many years, then stick into them whatever drives they happened to have or acquired at their desired prices. Synology’s stated needs for efficient support of drive arrays may be more defensible at the enterprise level, but as it gets closer to the home level, it suggests a different kind of optimization.
Well, I had been considering one, but I guess not
It sucks, because all things considered, they’re great little devices. I really like mine.
That’s what I’ve heard… Getting real tired of people building great products only for corpos to find a way to make it terrible for an extra buck
Def agree.
It’s like they don’t understand their demographic.
Yeah, I think their CEO might have QNAP stock or something.
It’s hilarious how dumb this is.
Hilarious and pathetic.
Like Brexit.
They absolutely do. But it’s a symptom of capitalism. They must seek higher and higher profits each year. And this is one of their ideas to seek higher profits…
The worst is that it will probably increase profit or a quarter or too while running the brand to the ground.
That’s capitalism, baby! /s
Growth imperative. Greed will never be satiated.
I remember arguing with some nerd that this overpriced shit was not fucking worth it and my build based on old server parts I got from a local computer recycler was infinitely superior in every way
I wish I saved that post so I could reply with this link. I feel so validated. Never trust companies. It’s why I say you should never fuck with plex, even if it is a bit easier to deploy than Jellyfin.
Yeah… Never had a specific “server” certified hardware and always repurpose my hold hardware stuff. Never failed me !!
However, there are some functions specific to NAS’ like low power and other stuff people mention but I already forgot.
IMO all this NAS and certified server stuff is good for Enterprise shit and the like… But for homelabbing it’s probably overkill and way to much overpriced for the little gain…
Except maybe for the ease of use and plug and play function? Each one it’s own I guess !
There’s plenty of N100/N350 motherboards with 6 SATA ports on AliExpress, grab them while you can
Do you happen to know about a decent solution for 8 SATA ports on a mini-ITX board?
Yes,
https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-cards/ECS07/ https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-RIITOP-Expansion-Chipset-ASM1166/dp/B0D8BCWHPT
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003335714128.html
Then you have 4 main plus these 5-6 extra. Just put your boot drive on a data drive instead of m.2 or get an adaptor and you are good to go. 8 data drives plus a boot drive
Thank you. I have seen the ASM1166 mentioned before as part of such a solution, but the other suggestions were new to me.
Can you also confirm to me, have I got it right that (some/all? of) the N100 boards has everything included regarding CPU, GPU and RAM, while most other mini-ITX boards come without those? Or did I get that wrong? Sorry for bothering you, but it’s all still a bit confusing to me, and I have an empty Jonsbo N3 case, and some 22TB drives that are longing to move into their house.
The only reason I even have “server” parts is because they were dirt cheap at the recycling center. Before I used this my rig was an old pc from a doctors office I worked at they were going to throw away from like 2009. It was awful spec wise but it did the job. My current build is overkill but I wanted to play with vms and local LLM stuff and the hardware was cheap, so why not?
low power is definitely something to consider though. That said there are some people that have made impressive builds out there. There are some low power builds on the unraid forums that use even less power than one of these things. It’s a bit more up front because it relies on some niche hardware but the power usage is so low it’s maybe worthwhile if you use it for years
I just fail to see the benefit of these. Ease of use for sure but assembling a pc is really not difficult and installing an OS is not hard either. And an os like unraid or truenas is pretty simple to use, they hold your hand a lot. Like I get that running Debian is something not everyone wants to do but then it’s like, just don’t do that then?
Frankly if you’re capable enough to configure the dockers you’d run on one of these, like plex or Jellyfin, I would think you could handle those things??
That would be my exit sign
Mine too. Already priced a new build half the price just the data migration I’m not looking forward too.
Can you migrate Synology data? I haven’t ever found a way.
Rsync or SCP?
Aren’t those for syncing data, not migrating data?
Same thing, no?
No, where am I supposed to sync the data to?
Curious as to what you are getting. Was planning to buy my Synology build some time later this year but not so sure about that anymore.
The enshittification/rent seeking continues. Nothing is sacred.
If I had known how bad it’d get I would’ve chosen a different field to work in. Sure, I can avoid it in my private life but on the job it’s like I’m in some kind of hostage situation.
“Oh hi there customer! You know our product your users are accustomed to will only come as a subscription from now on and it’ll also be really bad and force full screen ads. We’ll push two updates per day because our unpaid interns are so agile. Bugs? Oh, no, we call those ‘micro disruptions’. They’re a feature but don’t cost extra! How much the license costs? Well, how much do you have? Yes, it’ll be that much.”
I get why they do this sort of thing but it didn’t stop us re-adding video station and h265 support back into our Synos.
Someone already made a script to overwrite the existing compatible drive checker so someone will write a new script to fix the new one.
Oh, snap, bringing me the magic I need, but didn’t know to look for.
I’ve been refusing to update because of video station. Looks like I’m saving your comment for later.
That’s a massive shot in the foot.
As a Synology owner, I already had enough - they have arbitrarily cut customer support to sanctioned jurisdictions, leaving me without the support they promised and I expected when paying for a device.
Next one will definitely be built from the ground up.
They are probably betting they will make more money from businesses. I.e., actual pros, vs prosumer.
I do like my Synology NAS I bought 10 yrs ago, but these days there are more and better alternatives for people who dont really need to pay for the support and stability.
Why would anyone even use Synology?
Just buy a pc with big hard drives
My personal reasons for buying a synology were ease of use, reliability and power usage.
I had previously played around with TrueNAS in a VM using an external USB HDD Enclosure for storage and I just wanted something reliable. With TrueNAS I often ran into issues with user permissions one way or another and the Synology software is incredibly easy to use and foolproof.
Died 1990s, born 2025 - welcome back Mac hard drive firmware lockdowns
Lmao what is Synology smoking. I have used their hardware in the past, now I’m so glad that I chose a Nextcloud setup for my home storage solution.
Also why does the nonsense reasoning for these limitations always include “security”. That’s a rhetorical question btw, I know they are just making shit up.
This comment by Frodo Douchebaggins in the Ars Technica comments sums up my newfound disrespect for Synology pretty well:
Suck a turd, you enshittifying sons of bitches.
People who buy overpriced “solutions” instead of taking the time to configure a PC seem like exactly the crowd to enjoy a closed ecosystem (see apple)
Not everyone has time, skill, or desire to spend their nights learning how to build and configure a nas.
People have other hobbies than IT, so if a photographer wants to have a local storage for his portfolio without faff, I guess they can get fucked?
Really with your gatekeepingDon’t get me wrong, I don’t support this. But I can see how the suits at Synology could come to the conclusion that this is a great idea
The reason why Synology is great is their bulletproof reliability.
Sure you might be able to make a PC perform the same spec for spec but will it actually? And even with these devices, they are so far from Apple it isn’t funny, you have to set up a fair bit still to make the most of them.
Honestly HDDs/SDDs are a disposable part of the backup ecosystem, I get that they want some extra money but there are already scripts to overcome some of the existing compability checkers in these systems.
Fuuuck that
Welp, guess I definitely won’t be buying synology again in the future. I was planning to transition to a rackmounted NAS at some point and synology is overpriced in that category anyway but this puts the final nail in for me.
It’s a shame because I quite liked the simplicity of their UI.
The Unifi rackmount NAS looks pretty sweet imho.
That thing looks almost too good to be true for 500. What’s the drawback?
Not available in europe? (It actually is available, I just checked)
Loud as fuck?
Bad Software?
Only 7 bays and small rack size. It’s a NAS not like Synology + series.
Is that supposed to be a con? I don’t even use 4 bays currently and would be perfectly fine with a 4 rackmount NAS. 7 HDD bays sounds great to me
You have to sacrifice a goat to it every time a drive hits 829374930 revolutions of its third platter.
Hi. I’d like the word “pro-sumer” banned. In perpetuity.
Why?
They should be careful, they’re just selling small form factor computers with removable drive bays. Standing up and unraid or a true Naz isn’t all that difficult. And then there’s plenty of competition out there ready and willing to eat their lunch.
