16 ms·

The Synology End Game

• DocTomoe 1y ago
  Semi-OT: I currently have a QNAP TS-451D2. I use it mainly with a MacBook Pro. Something in QNAPs Samba implementation makes it glacially slow in that configuration. While it still does AFP (and then becomes somewhat decent to use), it's only a question of time for apple to chop that protocol. With QNAP having proven to be substandard and Synology going evil, what other options for a mid-range, local NAS for the tech guy who doesn't want to have another thing to tinker with do exist? I'm thinking 'appliance', not 'project'. Ideally, I want to just set it up once and then forget about it.
  • gbtw 1y ago
    Truenas (linux) has been like that for me. Repurposed my last pc, added a pci-e sas/sata card, add 8 hdd's. Installed it 2 years ago and its been auto updating and i have been hardly having to deal with it, at most an hour a month to check the status and maybe add or remove some docker container stuff thats running on there.
    • actionfromafar 1y ago
      An hour a month + some docker shenanigans I don't understand? Your sales pitch started out so good and then - anxiety spiking for me. :-D
      • MarioMan 1y ago
        I run TrueNAS Scale at home myself. There’s no need to proactively check in on anything if you’ve set up email alerts. It’s pretty straightforward to give the NAS permission to send you emails in case a drive dies on you rather than failing silently. Docker containers are just a nice bonus. You don’t need to use them if you don’t want to, but it is awfully convenient to run things like media encoders, torrent clients, download managers, etc. directly on your storage.
      • zer00eyz 1y ago
        Depending on what you build and how you build it you're going to have a large range of experiences. Do you need just disks in a raid? Look at it once a month to make sure nothing stupid has happened and go on with your life. Do you want to run a bunch of services (arr stack, home assistant, full on home lab type stuff) then yes it may require some more "work" depending on what your running and how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go.
    • brnt 1y ago
      Did something similar, but just used Debian stable and Samba. Rock stable without intervention other than an occasional login to update. My fileshare needs are simple (single user), so that might be a reason to not choose this. The nice thing is that since it's Debian you _can_ do more if you wish, at any time.
  • theshrike79 1y ago
    A Jonsbo case and Unraid: https://nascompares.com/2023/09/01/jonsbo-n2-nas-build-with-topton-motherboard-build-complete-guide/ https://nascompares.com/2023/09/01/jonsbo-n2-nas-build-with-... The Jonsbo cases are pretty compact and QNAP/Synology-ish. As for Unraid: You pay for it, so you're the customer and can expect some kind of support. It's also pretty damn stable and supports casual "I'll just add this drive to get more space" usage compared to ZFS stuff.
    • fer 1y ago
      >UnRAID >It's also pretty damn stable Not my experience. shfs crashes like crazy, tuning some things might alleviate it but it still fails. From the dozens of workarounds recommended, the only one that seems to help (for me and some others, not for everyone) is to disable NFS, which kinda defeats the point of a NAS for me. Also while memtest is needed to rule out a memory issue, I found some tendency to disregard these issues as hardware related... if it's only shfs crashing and not the kernel nor any other app, chances are it's an shfs issue. Currently I think they pin it on a libfuse bug. https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/stable-releases/683-shfs-error-results-in-lost-mntuser-r939/ https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/stable-releases/683-sh... https://forums.unraid.net/topic/189449-shares-keep-disappearing-after-update-to-701/ https://forums.unraid.net/topic/189449-shares-keep-disappear... https://forums.unraid.net/topic/137653-share-disappeared-again/ https://forums.unraid.net/topic/137653-share-disappeared-aga... https://forums.unraid.net/topic/161179-unraid-unstable-freezes-or-shares-disappear/ https://forums.unraid.net/topic/161179-unraid-unstable-freez... https://forums.unraid.net/topic/151605-mnt-user-is-gone/ https://forums.unraid.net/topic/151605-mnt-user-is-gone/
    • nottorp 1y ago
      Looks like we killed that site. Some header loads sloowly, but I get 'too many connections' instead of any article text.
      • euLh7SM5HDFY 1y ago
        [dead]
    • 1y ago
  • radicality 1y ago
    Have you already tried tinkering with the smb settings on both the local and nas config like here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102064 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102064 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101442 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101442 https://gist.github.com/jbfriedrich/49b186473486ac72c4fe194af01288be https://gist.github.com/jbfriedrich/49b186473486ac72c4fe194a...
  • makeitdouble 1y ago
    Would NFS be faster ? It was years ago but for whatever reason SMB was slow on my Mac even when connecting to Linux boxes. I mapped my user ID to the Synology user and switched to straight NFS instead, per wise it was night and day.
    • lostlogin 1y ago
      It’s baffling how messed up it is on the Mac. I get more reliable speeds and connections from an Ubuntu VM that’s running on the same Mac than I do from the Mac. How can this happen?
  • m-s-y 1y ago
    FWIW my qnap was also hammering my samba. After a few hours it would limit my transfers to 2Mb. I fixed it by removing the virtual network switch that gets installed if you use the container services.
  • sexeriy237 1y ago
    QNAP DOESN'T RESPOND TO RESEARCHERS THAT FIND ZERO DAYS IN THEIR CODE. that should tell you all you need to know
• dalf 1y ago
  similar post 4 months ago: Synology Lost the Plot with Hard Drive Locking Move (servethehome.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43734706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43734706
• khanan 1y ago
  Thing is, they used to be so good. I had a really tricky error, they had a tech help out during daytime, so guess he stayed up late to help us out and it was amazing customer support. They went FROM THAT, to me never touching their stuff again due to this (and the surveillance station-crap they pulled with yanking out codecs). They must've had a massive brainfart in the management at that company.
  • zer00eyz 1y ago
    Do you know why I tell my loved ones to get apple products? Because I don't want to support them. Your telling me that Synology is giving out apple levels of support in trade for vendor lock in. It sounds like the sort of thing I recommend to others because it wont be my problem. Go ask a "car guy" who has a civic or something that is LS swapped what car you should get. He's not going to recommend anything he is going to buy... he's gonna tell you to go get a bog standard Toyota so it isnt his problem. Meanwhile he has the fun, project car that does cool things but he's always fiddling with. Synology isn't for you any more... They want to be Toyota or apple or something not for nerds!
    • kotaKat 1y ago
      That's why I love and miss Drobo. Storage that "just worked" :(
    • Lord-Jobo 1y ago
      Yeah but the "I want a nas but I don't know anything about computers" crowd is microscopic. Choosing that for your customer base is stupid and shortsighted.
      • zer00eyz 1y ago
        > Yeah but the "I want a nas but I don't know anything about computers" crowd is microscopic. This is still a very "nerdy" take on the market. Though correct I dont think your seeing the other segments that are out there: The "I want more storage im sick of paying rent every month" crowed is growing. The designer/editor/youtuber who doesn't want to be their own IT department is growing.
• ramon156 1y ago
  I still have a Synology NAS running at my parent's place. My dad really wanted one. Now I don't know what to do. Can I just throw a new OS on it?
  • mvdtnz 1y ago
    Why would you need to do anything? Why do you think you'd be impacted?
• nness 1y ago
  It's a real shame too, I had purchased a DS723+ before the announcement and its a great little machine. The I can see why the Synology experience was such a draw for so long in the consumer space. The recent HDD drama is death for Synology's consumer appeal, but I imagine they'll shape-out a mid-market/small-business segment for themselves.
  • bayindirh 1y ago
    They're probably "pulling a Rolex" i.e. Go big or go home move. The thing is, the place they're moving a little dangerous. SOHO and SMB using 4-12 HDDs to serve a couple dozen people is a very small niche. Plus you can add professional photographers and videographers on top. Then what? The upmarket is very, very crowded. Will they OEM their wares to big players as entry level devices?
    • Lord-Jobo 1y ago
      They are going to get absolutely smoked upmarket. There's so much competition that has basically no downside comparitively. And probably in that niche too, once people realize how cheap used hardware really is.
      • bayindirh 1y ago
        Orico has a 4/5 slot USB3-10gbps DAS box, which can daisy chain up to three boxes. Get 6 boxes, daisy chain them as 2x3, connect to a powerful-ish NUC box. Install TrueNAS on it. Use the SATA port for the OS, leave the NVMe slot alone, add a 2-4 TB good SSD. Set the SSD as a cache to that 30 disk zRAID2 or zRAID3 pool. You can have a kick-ass enthusiast level NAS box which will beat many Synology boxes with a big clue bat...
• articsputnik 1y ago
  I have one too, 2013 I guess. I just use it as storage (samba-drive I guess) connected to my mini-computer (hp800) that runs hp800. I do occasional backups via rsync. It works. I also store some images etc. that I don't use there. But I only run a RAID, so I don't have the NAS backuped as well. I still have them in my old macbook backups. But not sure how to properly solve that dilemma of backing up a very large multiple TBs NAS, as I can't afford many more disks and another server to run just for that. If you have any a simple solution, I'm all ear :)
  • Kototama 1y ago
    You can use Synology Hyper Backup (or any cloud backup program) and an AWS S3 compatible provider, such as Backblaze.
    • articsputnik 1y ago
      what would be an option to still do it locally? without sending it to the cloud? probably needs a good compression
      • Kototama 1y ago
        You could have a big external USB drive and try a deduplicating backup software such as borg backup or restic.
        • articsputnik 1y ago
          borg is one that pops up all the time, maybe i need to look into that more deeply. I like rsync, but it's creating huge backups. thanks for the suggestions and help, much appreciated.
• nikanj 1y ago
  It's the circle of life: 1) Established players are all overpriced and focus on value extraction, not customer service 2) By actually helping your customers and providing good solutions at an affordable price, you can quickly grow to be a big player in the space 3) Now that we are a big player, we could be making big bugs by squeezing the customers who can't easily switch away 4) Established players are all overpriced and focus on value extraction, not customer service
• bayindirh 1y ago
  I'm looking for a NAS for a very long time (budget, size, network, etc.), but when I was ready to pull the trigger on a Synology, they did this, and I dodged a bullet. Long story short, I'll be buying an ASUSTOR AS6804T, and if I don't like the software, I'll just install TrueNAS on it. It's not only officially supported, they have a full length video showing the process. They don't provide tech support, but eh. Icing on the cake? The eMMC storing the original firmware sits on its own USB port, so you disable that port, and both disable and protect the firmware from being overwritten. If you want to return to original firmware, enable the port, remove the TrueNAS SSD, and viola!
  • ramon156 1y ago
    Does just getting an intel NUQ not suffice? i bought one for 180 and it works great. runnint ~16 apps + an MC server and no issues
    • bayindirh 1y ago
      I already have an infrastructure like that. Mine is running Debian Stable, a couple of containers for background jobs and a couple of daemons. However, I need to backup a lot of things, and ensure that they don't bitrot. A decade old photography archive, meticulously ripped CD libraries, a full cloud storage backup, etc. etc. Plus I don't want to dig disks to get a single file which I don't want to put on somebody else's computer (i.e. cloud storage). This needs a two tiered solution. Flash based hot-data area for the running daemons and a spinning array for backups. Both RAID (to be able to scrub and repair bitrot). The problem is, I'm a sysadmin. I see & use big storage systems and know what they are capable of. I want the personally useful subset of this at home. Plus I want to make it accessible to other people at home, so their files will be safe, too. This means at least TrueNAS and 4-6 disks to begin with.
    • dvdkon 1y ago
      That's not really comparable hardware. The AS6804T has four 3.5" HDD bays, Synology hardware generally offers two to eight bays. They're NASes, the NUC is just a mini computer with little to no built-in storage capacity. It's not about the apps here.
• codeflo 1y ago
  The year is 2025. Delivering a good product is not considered profitable enough anymore. If a company or product is beloved by customers then that means it doesn't squeeze them to the max. This is clearly money left on the table that someone will sooner or later extract. High-end brands are not exempt from this.
  • deadbabe 1y ago
    It’s not a lot of money left on the table though, the lion’s share of it has already been taken.
    • bartread 1y ago
      Yes, but that doesn’t stop companies from putting a disproportionate amount of effort into squeezing it out, instead of directing that effort towards developing better products.
      • quantummagic 1y ago
        Everyone is grabbing what they can in hopes of riding out the coming collapse. Providing a good product is little benefit in the face of looming economic disaster, ie. "the great reset". The fall of the west will be a bumpy ride, good product or not.
  • atlasduo 1y ago
    Easily explained: when times are tough, delivering growth naturally is hard. Squeezing the customer is the lowest hanging fruit. Sure, long term reputation is severely damaged, but why would decision makers care? Product owners interests are not aligned with interests of the company itself. Squeeze the customer, get your miniscule growth, call it "unlocking value", get your bonus, slap it onto your resume and move on to the next company. Repeat until retirement.
    • barnabee 1y ago
      When times are tough, accept less growth (or sometimes none) so that when times get good again or someone builds a competitor, all your customers don't leave you.
• mjg59 1y ago
  Synology are bad at technical restrictions. That doesn't help most people, and it's not any sort of defense, but anything they strongly attempt to impose here is going to fail. It took me an evening to break the protection they imposed on another layer, and a chunk of that evening was me and a bottle of mezcal and just writing INSERT statements into sqlite, we are really not talking about extreme competence. But! That doesn't matter, most users are never going to be able to do that themselves, and DMCA protections potentially prevent anyone sharing knowledge of how to do so without putting themselves at risk. The truth is that vendors can, under US law, threaten anyone who tells someone how to make the device they bought work properly with federal offences. Buy something else instead.
  • CPLX 1y ago
    Is it clear what the actual restrictions are here? I have a couple of diskstations and like them and was about to buy another. How does this actually affect me as a practical matter?
    • Uvix 1y ago
      It depends on the model you buy. On 2025 models forward, you cannot add unsupported disks to a storage pool. If you bring an existing pool forward from another machine, it will let you continue to use the old disks, but any replacement ones would need to be Synology-branded.
  • charles_f 1y ago
    I don't really get the point of hacking a synology to break this kind of protection. I understand why you'd take one so that you get everything setup for you, but if you're gonna invest time jailbreaking and hacking it, wouldn't you be better off using an old PC with your own linux/software setup as a server?
    • mjg59 1y ago
      Actually easier to remove the license restrictions around their RTSP backup software than it is to set up an equivalent thing myself (Edit: I have a very particular set of skills. Having put some time into making this work with tools I could put together myself and failing, I found that my Synology had a tool that did it perfectly and refused to do so for the number of cameras I had. I fixed that.)
• theshrike79 1y ago
  I had a 918+ that just... died. It started and then stopped, didn't POST. Panicked, built a full-ass Fractal 804 case + Unraid setup to replace it. Was looking around for That Guy who mails around a Synology box so I could get my data out and stumbled on a forum post(!) that said the external PSU just fails subtly sometimes. It gives enough power to start booting and then fails. Bought a 3rd party PSU from Amazon and the Synology boots up. Now the 918+ lives as an off site backup at my parents' house =)
  • mbirth 1y ago
    My 415+ had the famous C2000 issue where the timing signal wouldn’t be sufficiently pulled down/up. This lead to freezes and ultimately to a non-booting device. And that happened like 3 months out of warranty. The only “support” Synology offered was in helping me selecting a new device to buy. And they clearly knew how to fix it at this point as the support in other countries DID fix people’s devices. Luckily, the Internet did its thing and I was able to solder in the missing resistor myself. But that was the moment where I’ve decided that the next device won’t be a Synology again.
    • plqbfbv 1y ago
      Mine lasted a good 7y+ before it showed the yellow light of death. I also managed to fix it with the resistor soldering =)
    • bloggie 1y ago
      Fyi it's not a missing resistor but a silicon defect in the Intel chip where a low-side mosfet on a clock line wears out after a certain number of boot cycles, causing the system to fail POST. It is an easy fix (I had to do it too) but I agree Synology's poor support makes this the last of their products I'll use.
• amiga386 1y ago
  On that very topic, do HNers have any case and/or motherboard recommendations for a homebrew NAS? I have my NAS on a shelf in a mini-ITX case, but it only fits two 3.5" HDDs internally (as well as an SSD, but full-size HDDs are what matter for bulk data storage, the more the better) Also, it takes a normal full-size ATX PSU because I was fed up a previous case that only had room for its own custom PSU, which kept failing under load. But I note there are now standardised small sizes like TFX12V and LFX12V, are there any efficient and reliable PSUs in these form factors?
  • detaro 1y ago
    its not the smallest, but the Fractal Node 304 is nice IMHO.
    • gvalkov 1y ago
      I'm using that case with with a 200mm fan front-panel mod[1]. Despite its size, it gets pretty cramped. It's just hard to keep it organized without a dedicated SATA backplane. [1]: https://www.printables.com/model/866109-200mm-fan-front-for-fractal-node-304 https://www.printables.com/model/866109-200mm-fan-front-for-...
      • detaro 1y ago
        true, but I'm also not a fan of backplanes, so I just deal with it.
  • celeryd 1y ago
    I use samba on Debian Linux running on a Mac Mini. The data partition lives on an externally connected Samsung SSD. It's probably not what you want, but it sure is small.
    • walthamstow 1y ago
      Assume that's an Intel Mac Mini?
  • 1y ago
• tern 1y ago
  I don't have any personal experience, but I passively follow video editor YouTube and everybody's talking about switching to a UNAS Pro[1], which integrates tightly with the UniFi gear people already love. I'm happy to see it—looks great, it's priced insanely well, and I can see myself switching from Synology in the future. In other news, I've been a fan of LucidLink[2] for awhile, which you can use to avoid needing a NAS for video editing workflows, and a very slick competitor finally came onto the scene[3]. LucidLink totally works, but their software is frustratingly idiosyncratic. These services offer some kind of chunked file streaming magic that lets you progressively download pieces of video files as you need them. I was somewhat surprised to discover, however, that there doesn't appear to be an open source project that provides this functionality. Anybody know of anything? And I wonder if anyone's looked into it and knows how it works? [1] https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/unas-pro https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/unas-pro [2] https://www.lucidlink.com/ https://www.lucidlink.com/ [3] https://shade.inc https://shade.inc
  • bkazez 1y ago
    I do video postproduction and am trying to archive/backup 100-250GB of large files per month. Ended up very slowly rsyncing to Synology NAS, confirming checksums with another script, using Synology onboard stuff to backup to AWS, and dealing with all the totally random hard drive noise. If I want to work on one of these old projects, I have to download it locally so 4K editing works. Meanwhile my old projects back when I used different software are impossible to open. I have spent days setting up all this junk, HATE the Synology UI, and regret it all. What’s the better solution? Just a bunch of RAIDs that I connect to with USB??
    • tern 1y ago
      If you can afford it, https://shade.inc/ https://shade.inc/ or https://www.lucidlink.com/ https://www.lucidlink.com/ are magic. Rather than downloading that 4K file entirely before you start, it will download chunks as you need them while editing. Avoids the NAS entirely, though you may want separate backups. If you're local to your equipment (and can afford it), 10G local network with UNAS Pro. Search YouTube for "unas pro video editing" and there are various people discussing their setups. In this setup, your connection to the NAS is fast enough that file transfer speeds aren't such a problem, and the NAS software is nicer to deal with. And, I know less about it, but you might want to investigate: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudbackup https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudbac... Finally, check https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/ https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/. Lots of good threads there.
• clownpenis_fart 1y ago
  [dead]
• wraptile 1y ago
  time and time again people fall for proprietary lock-in to the point where it's hard to exert any sympathy.
• PlaneSploit 1y ago
  Xpenology exists remember (running Synology OS with no Synology hardware)
  • b3lvedere 1y ago
    It's a pain to set up and keep it up to date though.
    • PlaneSploit 1y ago
      Yeah I wouldn't recommend using it but it does exist. I would just use Fedora server. For the same reasons I wouldn't recommend Synology.
• buibuibui 1y ago
  I actually like their software offerings like Synology Drive and Synology Moments. Their backup solution also seem to "just work" with Hyper Backup. I'm using a Mac und tried to use Nextcloud, but my conclusion with the Nextcloud Desktop Client is, that it is buggy as hell. Especially the VFS implementation. Synology Drive in opposite just works (for me).
  • conradfr 1y ago
    I have a basic Synology DS<something> and like it (for the price). I also use their Android app to stream music and it's not stellar but works I guess. I'm more shocked by the state of samba in macOS (without additional software). Having to go to the network and manually reconnect to the NAS share every time I come back home is ... poor.
    • lostlogin 1y ago
      It’s so poor. To get my mini power up, connect SMB then start some containers I made a horrific Automator app, which runs a script and just tries, sleeps then tries again until my containers can boot and access their data. It’s disgusting. But it works.
• esel2k 1y ago
  I kept beeing a fan of Synology mainly for their apps and ease of use. I have bought a used DS920+ with 20GB or Ram - still a perfect combo of transcoding and docker. However since I started discovering the world of selfhosted apps, Synology has no unique selling point anymore. Their apps stalled in innovation and with this drama I would go for some dedicated linux hardware with docker and thats it. Most of the data fits on a simple 2Drive NAS today anyway.
  • Hamuko 1y ago
    Pretty much everything on my Synology DS920+ is running inside Docker. I think the only exception is Plex, which I've installed natively on the device – but even Plex needs to be downloaded directly from Plex because the one in the package center is outdated. When I outgrow my DS920+, I'm probably gonna build a custom Unraid machine to replace it. Most of my needs from Synology are being able to run Docker containers and mix-and-match drives.
    • fragmede 1y ago
      I tried unRAID but ran into a bunch of bugs/issues/missing features and it's not open source so it's a dead end. It's a cool concept but I'd look elsewhere.
    • lostlogin 1y ago
      I graduated from Synology docker, to Docker compose and my world got better. The weird quirks of Synology Docker are painful. Eg containers that won’t stop, or won’t start. It’s not easy to get into the containers (docker exec), recreating is tricky compared to copying and pasting docker-compose.yml.
      • Hamuko 1y ago
        Synology Docker aka Container Manager has support for Docker Compose under "Projects". It even explicitly gives you the option or either uploading a ready-made docker-compose.yml or to create a new one. Personally, I mainly use the CLI to manage my Compose files even on Synology DSM.
• hum3hum3 1y ago
  It is sad. I liked my Ds with ecc. It has been great but it complains about the non synology memory. So it sounds like it will be my last after about 20 years
• tecleandor 1y ago
  Not only that, but their security situation is terrible. Their OS is full of EOL'ed stuff. On products you can buy TODAY, you find: - Their Btrfs filesystem is a fork of a very old branch and doesn't have modern patches - A custom, non standard, self built, ACL system for the filesystem - Kernel 4.4 - PHP 7.4 (requirement for their Hyperbackup app) - smbd 4.15 - PostgreSQL 11.11 - smbd 8.2p1 - Redis 6.2.8 - ... They claim it's OK because they've backported all security fixes to their versions. I don't believe them. The (theoretical) huge effort needed for doing that would allow them to grow a way better product. And it's not only about security, but about features (well, some are security features too). We're missing new kernel features (network hardware offload, security, wireguard...), filesystem (btrfs features, performance and error patches...), file servers (new features and compatibility, as Parallel NFS or Multichannel CIFS/SMB), and so on... I think they got stuck on 4.4 because of their btrfs fork, and now they're too deep on their own hole. Also, their backend is a mess. A bunch of different apps developed on different ways that mostly don't talk to each other. They sometimes overlap with each other and have very essential features that don't work and don't plan to fix. Meanwhile, they're busy releasing AI stuff features for the "Office" app. Edit note: For myself and some business stuff, I have a bunch of TrueNAS deployments, from a small Jonsbo box for my home, to a +16 disk rack server. This was for a client that wanted to migrate from another Synology they had on loan, and I didn't want to push a server on them, as they're a bit far away from me, and I wanted it to be serviceable by anyone. I regret it.
  • Shank 1y ago
    The encryption is also broken. If you use encrypted shared folders, you have an arbitrary filename limit (https://kb.synology.com/en-ro/DSM/tutorial/File_folder_path_name_too_long https://kb.synology.com/en-ro/DSM/tutorial/File_folder_path_...). If you use volume encryption, your encryption key is stored on the NAS itself, which is capable of decrypting the data, unless you buy a second Synology NAS (https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2023/06/volume-encryption-in-synology-dsm-7-2-luks-with-questionable-key-management/ https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2023/06/volume-encryption-in-syno...) to act as a key vault. Synology claims that volume encryption protects if you if the storage drives are stolen, but in what world would the drives, and not the NAS itself, be stolen?
• M95D 1y ago
  But self-building a NAS is still a problem, and I'm also talking about this [1] article from the same blog: There are NO low power NAS boards. I'm talking about something with an ARM CPU, no video, no audio, lots of memory (or SODIMM slot) and 10+ SATA ports. Sure, anyone can buy a self-powered USB3 hub and add 7 external HDDs to a raspbery, but that level of performance is really really low, not to mention the USB random disconnects. And no, port replicators aren't much better. [1] https://lowendbox.com/blog/are-you-recyling-old-hardware-for-your-diy-the-environment-isnt-thanking-you/ https://lowendbox.com/blog/are-you-recyling-old-hardware-for...
  • fx1994 1y ago
    yup, thats why I alwys end up with microatx board, it just works, it draws power but does the job I need
  • storus 1y ago
    Why don't you look at Topton's N100 boards with 6x SATA, 2.5Gb LAN, PCIe slot for extra SATA ports and Jonsbo N3 NAS case with it? For $300 you'd have a way better NAS than anything Synology offers.
    • M95D 1y ago
      I think we have different definitions of what "low power" means.
      • justincormack 1y ago
        What do you want? The N100 is 6W in theory not sure if you can downclock it or how good the power control is. Problem below that is that is mostly mobile phone type CPUs and they dont have much IO. Drives in a NAS are going to consume a bit of power too so its not really clear how low you can go.
        • M95D 1y ago
          I want less power and more storage. I want less than 10W idle for the whole system, maybe except HDDs, but even those will be in sleep much of the time. x86 boards are mostly ATX-powered and I don't think any ATX power source can go that low and still be efficient (not draw 20W while powering a 10W system). And yes, mobile phone CPUs are good enough. I'm using a Turris Omnia now and Marvell 385 is OK, except I have to use an external DAS for hard drives which eats 10 times more than the Omnia with all drives sleeping. If only the chinese didn't try to make good-for-everything-best-at-nothing ARM boards with lots of video outs, audio, discrete NIC and soldered wifi...
• AndrewDucker 1y ago
  I'm not seeing anything saying that you can't use third-party drives. Am I missing a blog post from Synology somewhere?
  • Kototama 1y ago
    https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requires-self-branded-drives-for-some-consumer-nas-systems-drops-full-functionality-and-support-for-third-party-hdds https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requ...
    • AndrewDucker 1y ago
      Thank you!
• Shank 1y ago
  I recently moved all of my NAS needs to a UNAS Pro and just have an old Intel Bean Canyon NUC in the closet running apps on top of it. Portainer is a reasonable docker frontend, though not perfect -- but more importantly, the storage is just separated from the NAS entirely. As long as your NAS can serve files to a secondary server, you the sky is the limit with what you have actually accessing the files and doing things with. The particularly jarring thing in this article is the SMB concurrency limits. Those effectively gate your scalability in terms of storage. Even more than forcing their own drives to be used, the concurrent user limit is a clear enterprise upsell: charge people to get a higher limit. The byproduct, of course, is that elaborate home lab connections or setups will also be hit by this.
  • master_crab 1y ago
    How’s the UNAS? I’m firmly in the UI ecosystem for networking and security and looked at it earlier this year (I think they released the offering only in the past 12-24 months). But my synology 1221 is fairly new so I have at least 5 (probably more) years left of useful life in it. UI isn’t without their own faults but allowing their unifios to run on grey boxes has improved my opinion of them further.
    • christkv 1y ago
      That’s what I’m running and it’s been great so far have 7x16gb in raid 5 since reading is the main use case
• tianshuo 1y ago
  Synology is actively downgrading their systems; it used to have video station and h265 hardware decoding on 7.2.1, but on 7.2.2+, Video Station is removed and so is h265 hw decoding.... and guess what, if you update, you can't downgrade.
• rcarmo 1y ago
  I have a Synology but got my hands on a TerraMaster last year, and all things considered I may well get another TerraMaster if they stick to their current approach: boot Ubuntu off an easily removable USB stick and ship standard Intel hardware. https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/12/26/2330 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/12/26/2330 (includes all the steps I took to run Proxmox on it as well as an overview of their standard feature set and BIOS)
• mrb 1y ago
  For the last 20+ years I have always built my own home NAS. 6 to 8 drives. ZFS. Initially OpenSolaris, then FreeBSD, and nowadays Debian. I would hate to use a proprietary solution like Synology. I'm generally very happy with my builds, hardware-wise and software-wise. Surprisingly the most annoying thing of a custom build is that there aren't many choices of decent compact 8-drive NAS chassis (it's a small market after all). By compact, I mean micro-ATX or smaller. Because there is no standard placement of SATA ports on a motherboard, sometimes depending on the combination of motherboard and chassis, it's physically impossible to plug in all cables in the ports. Even when using a combination of straight and right-angle cables. Currently I'm using https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/MATX-ITX-mainboard-8-bays-home_1600079006597.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/MATX-ITX-mainboard-8-... (many Chinese companies sell similar clones) It's not as compact as an 8-drive Synology NAS chassis but it's compact enough for me.
  • flakeoil 1y ago
    Yes, a standard Linux computer is the way to go. I would argue most people do not need complicated redundant drive setups. A regular computer with a standard SSD works fine. Probably good to start out with a new one though and not reuse an old one from an old computer.
• wulfstan 1y ago
  Stupid question, but has anyone hacked/replaced the vanilla firmware on Synology boxes and got it running something more flexible? This is kind of a lazyweb request, but I have an old Synology box that I wouldn't mind resurrecting.
  • wulfstan 1y ago
    Answering my own question: If you've got a QNAP, you can install Debian 10 on some of them <https://www.cyrius.com/debian/ https://www.cyrius.com/debian/> If you've got a Synology, it has been done on some older devices as well <https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Synology https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Synology> So all is not necessarily lost, and I have one of each so will need to do some experiments!
• exmadscientist 1y ago
  A big part of the appeal of Synology was that you could just forget about it. I have a little one in the corner that's just been sitting there serving files out over SMB for years now. It doesn't need to do anything more and I don't need to think about it. A lot of the alternatives being proposed are not so easy to maintain. A full general purpose OS install doesn't really take care of itself. And I don't have (and don't want) a 19-inch rack at home. Ever. So what's the set-up-and-forget-until-it-gets-kicked-over option?
  • joshstrange 1y ago
    This. I came to Synology after years of managing regular Linux (Debian) servers, then Unraid, and then Synology. Synology was the most expensive thing I’ve used but I also _never_ think about it. The same could not be said for previous setups. I want a stupid-easy NAS, plug-and-play, hotswapable bays. I’m not interested in having to shut down a tower and open it up to swap/add drives. I have 2x12-bay Synology’s and I haven’t found an equivalent product yet (open to options).
    • Marsymars 1y ago
      I have a similar lack of interest in opening up a tower to swap drives. QNAP has some nice JBOD enclosures. If you don't want any 2.5" drives their biggest enclosures are 8-bays, so you'd need an ATX tower with three available PCIe slots to run all the SFF cables for 3x8 drives. You would need to manage your own software stack with Unraid or w/e.
    • nine_k 1y ago
      > I’m not interested in having to shut down a tower and open it up to swap/add drives. How often do you actually do this? In 15 years of running my own NAS boxes, I so far had to do it once. I, of course, choose slow, middle of the range disks.
      • joshstrange 1y ago
        I never went more than 1, maybe 2, years without needing to open it up. To be fair, I was adding drives over time as I could afford them and I had a large range of drives of various ages that slowly died out or needed to be replaced with larger capacity drives. It’s partly the annoyance of being in a cramped space filled with drives but also the downtime. Family and friends use self-hosted software than runs on my main server and uses the NAS(es). Shutting down a NAS means shutting down the software. Yes, I can let them know ahead of time and “schedule downtime” but I dislike needing to do that unless I have to. It just makes the system feel less stable for them and I want to provide a great experience. With hotswap bays externally accessible I don’t have to stop anything. I’d actually be fine with UnRaid (I still run it as my “app” server) if there was a case with 12 or more 3.5” hotswap bays. I looked into large JBOD servers but between fan noise and rack mounted servers often being in a whole other class (one I have much less experience in compared to desktop tower builds) I’ve never been able to convince myself to get one. My Synology 12-bays are quiet and easy to work with so even at ~$1.5K they were a steal in terms of maintenance and upkeep (for me).
• andyjohnson0 1y ago
  I'm currently on the market for a NAS. Main use would be simple RAID storage for personal stuff: photos, etc. Also local backup. I'd been considering the Synology SS425+. I was aware of the restrictions on disk support. Comments in this thread are making me think twice. So what's good? Ugreen? I'd appreciate recommendations.
  • mkl 1y ago
    I'm in a similar situation. Any thoughts, recommendations, warnings about QNAP or Asustor?
  • cyberpunk 1y ago
    I’ve been looking at a minisforum n5 pro for a while, but it’s got a lot of horsepower and wouldn’t just be a nas. 10g ports, latest amd, hopefully freebsd works okay on it…
  • izacus 1y ago
    Ugreen has no encryption support which is quite a pain for storing personal data :/
• Paul_S 1y ago
  I ran my own NAS for over two decades in some old 4U I got for cheap, using whatever discarded consumer HW I got for free and I never got the point of Synology. Colleague who has one said it's compact. Well, this year I bought one of those gaming cube cases (with space for 10 drives, what do people do with them in gaming pcs? OK, only 8 spaces are actually drawers with grommets but physically you can fit 10) and retired my 4U. Seriously, takes an hour to setup your own NAS and you can mix any drives, setup any encryption you want, seedbox etc. I totally understand convenience but this is not a email server you're setting up here, it's just a NAS.
  • martijn_himself 1y ago
    I'm interested in starting out like this, I have a bunch of 2.5" SSD's I'm not using- do you have any tips on what cube to get? Are you concerned about power usage at all especially if this is always on?
    • Paul_S 1y ago
      Any of those cube gaming ones I think are great. I got a dual chamber one which makes shuffling drives and cabling easy. Can't remember the name but it was 90 pounds, way more than I paid for the old 4U, although inflation from the 90s probably means it was more expensive in real terms. Most of the power is used to spin rust so not sure it's worth worrying about the HW power use, just use whatever old pc you can get for free, ask colleagues and family, people throw out working PCs all the time, it's a NAS, not a rendering farm, if it boots it's good enough IMHO.
      • Paul_S 1y ago
        Found the name: Fractal node 804.
        • martijn_himself 1y ago
          Great- thanks for this.
  • 1y ago
• ddon 1y ago
  We tried bunch of NAS solutions in the past, and most recent switch is Ubiquiti NAS, so far so good…
• plqbfbv 1y ago
  I have used Synology NASes for a good 15y now, and the one I'm on will likely be my last (DS920). I have watched the software evolve from "quite good" to "very good" to "lets reimplement everything ourselves and close it off as much as possible". It's sad because back in the day, at least for me, the brand was the perfect UX in many regards: small form factor and low power, price-accessible 4/5 bay NASes, a couple CPU tiers, upgradable hardware, regular software updates and a huge collection of software features. For me they were the go-to choice for NAS because of the good web UI, the ease of setup and reliable operation that covered 99% of the prosumer usecases. They would just chug along forever, auto-updating themselves, never skipping a beat. Whenever I wanted to do special things with it via SSH I could, but the environment has become increasingly hostile to the point where I need to spend hours wondering how the heck the thing operates without bursting on fire. I'm hoping that by the time I need to change my DS920 another good company like they were will have emerged, because building your own solution comes with operational maintenance and I want the thing to Just Work®.
  • edem 1y ago
    What are the current options? I've been looking but I haven't found any. I have a DS923+ and it works fine, but I can already see what you are talking about.
    • CharlesW 1y ago
      I've purchased 3 QNAP NAS products over the course of a decade or so, and remain happy to recommend them. Their reputation was damaged by a raft of ransomware attacks in 2021 and 2022, but since then they've been better about improving overall system security and forcing basic security hygiene on users (who often don't know any better).
    • tenuousemphasis 1y ago
      TrueNAS Community Edition?
    • itsrobreally 1y ago
      I just got a Ugreen 2800 to replace a homemade NAS, I had a Synology for a few years but it got slower and slower as the software changed so I ditched it maybe 10 years ago? One of the things that sold me on the Ugreen was that it is basically just a garden-variety N100 box, upgradeable RAM, supports SATA and M.2, etc. According to this installing your own OS doesn't invalidate the warranty so if I decide their software is lousy I can install Debian https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Ugreen https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Ugreen
• noisy_boy 1y ago
  For someone very comfortable with desktop Linux and NAS curious without much hardware skills, are there any good guides to get started? I use a HDD enclosure with two 2TB disks shoved in but the content availability is dependent on my laptop being on. I would rather have JellyFin running on my NAS/media server so that we can watch stuff on TV even when the laptop is off. Would be good to be able to access the network file system over NFS using WiFi to avoid being tethered to the desk.
  • poulpy123 1y ago
    Since you're comfortable with linux, you really don't need a tutorial. Just buy a cheap minipc or maybe a raspberry if you fancy it, install the distribution of your choice or something more complete like OMV7, plug your enclosure and you're done
    • noisy_boy 1y ago
      That could work. The only thing I have noticed with my laptop+ enclosure based setup is that the disks go to "sleep", probably due to power management, so if it has been a while since I accessed the contents, I need to click on the mount point in the explorer window for the disks to start spinning and the files to be available again. I don't want to deal with that so I was thinking that a box with slots for multiple internal disks will not have such issues. I can try to tinker with USB power settings but that could be a time sink/brittle solution.
• edude03 1y ago
  A s a technologist I think this is obviously a move in the wrong direction but let’s be real - Synology is going to be fine. The type of people who buy synology are the same people who buy Apple and are the same people who buy prebuilt gaming PCs, they’re actively trying to avoid knowing how it works so they can focus on the task to be done. I have a DS1823 for what it’s worth, but I also have a home built NAS from ten years ago and a Ugreen running nixos. I explicitly use the Synology stock for things that just need to work
• sigio 1y ago
  The only NAS (or other appliance boxes) I will tolerate are just plain 'generic' PC's with a regular Linux distro on them (Debian in my preferred case).
• jbverschoor 1y ago
  I’d love to swap my ds920 for any Apple Mx macmini, preferably with more ram
• qazxcvbnm 1y ago
  When things aren’t ticking perfectly for Synology their software can be kind of weird. Sometimes after power failures, some disks get corrupted and… you simply can’t log in to the Synology UI during this time (unless you “synobootseq --set-boot-done”, why, of course) for an unspecified number of hours. Their custom software has its quirks (eg scp doesn’t work unless you apply the -O flag, for “security” reasons), and the quirks change sometimes after updates.
• juujian 1y ago
  What are the go-to Synology alternatives atm? Was going to get a Synology box for a small team but could not get what we wanted for a reasonable price from them. I won't be the one maintaining it, otherwise I would get a linux client for sure.
• julian_t 1y ago
  I got given a small Synology box by a brother-in-law, and have not been impressed by their OS or apps, so I just use rsync. It's OK, but as my needs are simple I'm thinking of using an RPi solution instead. (What was amusing was that I kept finding it powered off, and spent quite a while trying to find why it could be shutting down. It turned out that, because I kept it on the floor under my desk, the Roomba would occasionally bump into it and hit the power button on the front)
• mergy 1y ago
  Used to love Synology and had a NAS from them, but it EOL'd and it was a shame since the hardware and drives were fine. I went to TrueNas and have been extremely happy and never looked back.
• wtcactus 1y ago
  I’ve bought an Ugreen NAS right when they came out. Installed TrueNAS and it’s been rock solid and with a lot of hardware features Synology doesn’t offer all this time. There’s really not a lot of reasons to use Synology anymore (only thing I miss was the sync solution they had. It was indeed better than Syncthing and the likes).
  • Tajnymag 1y ago
    Does UGreen support ECC memory? As far as I've read online, it's crucial for Truenas.
    • wtcactus 1y ago
      In part that’s an interesting question. Some of the processors on the Ugreen line are Xeons, so they should support ECC, but I’m not sure the MB does. But you don’t really need ECC for ZFS. That’s a kind of myth that has been debunked several times. Sure, it’s always good, but ZFS works just fine without it. (I’m on my phone so it’s dificult to find a good source for the claim, but if you search a bit, you’ll find some good blog posts talking about it).
      • Tajnymag 1y ago
        Well, that's the thing. I've also found some posts saying it's a myth and you'd be fine, but the ratio of posts recommending ECC to posts debunking the myth is like 10:1.
        • wtcactus 1y ago
          The important key point is that you will not lose anything by using ZFS without ECC compared to using any other file system without ECC. The myth is that you specifically need ECC if you’ll be using ZFS, not that ECC is a really good idea for any file system. https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/ https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-y...
• anonymousiam 1y ago
  It's been a good run. My first Synology NAS was a DS-409+. I'm on my third one now, but am actively looking for alternatives. They had excellent support, and maybe still do, but the BS with requiring "their" hard drives is ridiculous. They are not a hard drive manufacturer, so this is a pure profit play. I've put some work into customizing my Synology NAS(s), and they're doing a lot for me right now, so it will be painful to transition, but I'm going to bite the bullet and do it anyway, because they've become irredeemable.
• daft_pink 1y ago
  I’m really hoping that unifi comes up with an awesome NAS. As I love their products and think they could come up with something great easily as they are in a similar position in the space.
• crmd 1y ago
  >What I can’t live with is the new policy, implemented this year, where you must buy your drives from Synology. Used to do the same thing at EMC back in the 90s-early 2000s with Symmetrix. The cover story was that the EMc-branded drives, which were marked up like 1000x had “special firmware”. The reality was that it was to prevent procurement guys from putting a BOM spreadsheet in front of the sales rep and saying “why are you charging me $2M for $100k of parts I can buy at Fry’s?
• kabdib 1y ago
  i have maybe $15K in Synology gear. it's getting old and should be replaced with something with better efficiency the replacement will NOT be from Synology
• BonoboIO 1y ago
  Had a Synology as my first NAS but switched to a custom diy box with intel i3 and unraid and never looked back. Once it’s running its just a breeze.
• whalesalad 1y ago
  Anyone know of something equivalent to the HL-8 from 45homelab but more affordable? The price ($700) is obscene for a barebones chassis that is just a backplane w/o cpu/mobo/ram/psu: https://store.45homelab.com/configure/hl8 https://store.45homelab.com/configure/hl8 The Unifi UNAS Pro looks pretty cool (and my entire rack is Unifi) but I want more control over the OS and would prefer to run TrueNAS: https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/unas-pro https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/unas-pro I am shopping to replace a DS918+ that has been in service for almost 8 years. Honestly it's been rock solid without a single hiccup - even upgraded the entire pool disk-by-disk a few years back without problems. But I was already losing interest in Synology's OS and after their recent shift to locking down drive options that is the nail in the coffin so I wanna build my own.
• jchw 1y ago
  I just recently grabbed an old Supermicro chassis off eBay and have been getting things slowly set up recently. So long Synology, and thanks for all the fish. (I'm just going to run a stock Linux distro rather than anything particularly fancy, personally. Good enough for me. Maybe this is finally an excuse to run copyparty somewhere.)
• PaulHoule 1y ago
  I got an i5 tower almost 10 years ago from https://ithacareuse.org/ https://ithacareuse.org/ for use as a home server, it has a ZFS RAID 1 where I replaced the drives once and I guess I should again soon if I care about the warrantee. I did have a challenging upgrade because Ubuntu made a /boot partition that was too small to reliably update the kernel but I had a spare SSD sitting around which let me just install the OS on the new SSD and swap it in without any risk. It runs the ubiquiti controller, plex, and a few other services. It is not a powerful server by any means but it is massively overpowered for what it does which is better than being underpowered. I messed around with appliances in the 2000s and they inevitably left a bad taste in my mouth. They had 10% of the power of a real computer but cost 70% as much or they used an i3 and you couldn’t install a GPU —- penny wise and pound foolish.
• mrighele 1y ago
  > I have to imagine one can find a case that allows tons of drives and is still powered by something modest. I found it almost impossible to find a case which has a fair number of bays (at least 6), is meant for an human environment (i.e. it is not ugly or meant for a rack) and doesn't cost a lot. So I am now working on hanging an ikea skadis on the wall and attaching everything to it. The big panel has just the right space for everything (10 disks, mobo, extra sata controller, PSU), it is ridiculously cheap, I had fun designing the parts and 3d printing them (though there are many available for free on the web) and it gives easy access to the disks and can be a topic of discussion when friends come over. Not sure it will work properly though :-) (issues may arise with vibrations, temperatures etc). As an alternative to make it completely visible, I though about doing the opposite, hiding inside regular furniture. You can easily find metal frames meant for an "open chassis" to properly arrange motherboard, disks etc, so it is doable. The easiest would be using a regular cupboard, but I would love to use an ottoman and be able sit on top of it, a la cray-1. I "only" need to solve the issue of hiding the cable, and giving proper ventilation.
• christkv 1y ago
  I just bought the ubiquity nas just want as close to a dumb shared disk as possible. Streaming is a nuc talking to the the nas
• Forge36 1y ago
  Years ago (2015?) I bought a DS416j. Paid maybe $400 at the time. It was the simplest plug-n-play NAS could I could find. I didn't even know it had a GUI! (I was being very lazy with my searching). Two 2tb HDDs. Eventually I started running home assistant (no docker). 2023 I was getting annoyed with performance. Two 2tb SSDs added (4 slots) which helped. 2025 I've moved home assistant to a dedicated $70 thin client. As a dedicated personal backup for my family it's been perfect. The latest vendor lock in has me reconsidering how I'll upgrade when the time comes. Until this post I was considering a $1000 unit and transferring my SSD drives before buying more storage. Sounds like it's time to build a proper storage+computer rack.
• aborsy 1y ago
  I back up to Synology, but always recover from ZFS. Synology DSM has all kinds of limitations and is slow. Your encryption cannot be like this, you cannot store data in your NVMes, the number of versions must be limited to that, you cannot search snapshots, Hyperbackup explorer provides just one button: Recover (compare that with restic or Borg!), encryption in HB is opaque, ABB is limited to specific kernel versions, information out of SMART is limited, cannot upgrade drives’ firmware, search options are too limited and search is bad, OpenVPN is old and has compatibility issues with newer systems, … I can go on and on! You cannot compare that with a backup system with ZFS, restic/borg, syncthing and rclone, in the same class!
  • LeoPanthera 1y ago
    ZFS is why I bought a QNAP NAS. As far as I can tell, no Synology device supports ZFS, but lots of QNAP devices do.
• ajoberstar 1y ago
  I was on my 3rd Synology over the last 12 years or so. They were solid and something I didn't have to pay attention to. But the drive lock-in tipped me over the edge when I needed to expand space. I'm getting burned out with all of these corporate products gradually taking away your control (Synology, Sonos, Harmony, etc.). Even though it takes more time and attention, I ended up building my own NAS with ZFS on Debian using the old desktops I use for VMs. I did enjoy the learning experience, but I can't see it's that reasonable a use of time.
  • esseph 1y ago
    > can't see it's that reasonable a use of time That totally depends on if you enjoyed yourself and maybe learned something or not. Totally up to you!
    • ajoberstar 1y ago
      Definitely. Should have phrased it as "cant's see it's that reasonable a use of time _for most people_".
• spauldo 1y ago
  It's probably different if you're at a company that actually does what they should and keeps up with all the service contracts and whatnot. I wouldn't know because I always end up at the other type of company. But I will never buy a NAS or SAN from a company that uses custom firmware on drives. Some dipshit beancounter will come along, "save" some money by not renewing the service contract, and then I'm off hunting for replacement drives on eBay.
• bcrl 1y ago
  Looks like another instance of Fuck You software. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45071169
• dostick 1y ago
  How ugly customer-hating synology is: Synology DSM os measures free space in percent. So when on your multi terabyte volume 200GB free remaining, you would receive notifications until it’s about 100GB free and then you will not receive notifications even it it runs out of space completely. You can set the free disk space threshold percentage but it will accept number no lower than 5%. This is obviously a rudiment from old times, 20 years ago when volumes were 1-10GB, not TB. I asked them to change threshold from percent to GB, over multiple times over few years - not going to. I asked them to allow change threshold to lower value than 5% - not interested. Not only you can’t know when disk drive runs out of space, but excessive notifications when there’s still lot of free space desensitises, so when actual disk failure happens you would ignore notification.
• robmsmt 1y ago
  I’ve been thinking more and more with synology’s recent changes that it would open up the market for some new entrants that are like the system76 of NAS that are: - low power cpu (arm?) - uses latest kernel and flavor of Linux distributions - makes own modular hardware in smallish form factor - basic support package with slower SLAs to more professional SLAs for enterprises, I would happily pay per month to prevent enshitification if I had guaranteed support and even more so if it bundled some zero trust encrypted cloud storage.
• snapplebobapple 1y ago
  The thing with synology is they do the basic stuff but they also do two things I haven't found a viable, open source alternative for: 1. o365 backup. There used to be corso, which looked promising but still needed ag ui frontend to be viable, but the entire team got bought by someone and abandoned the project. 2. agent based full machine backup. I can install the agent on a machine (but especially a windows machine) and it just backs up on my schedule and works, plus is easy to convert the resulting backup image to a vm to load on the synology or my proxmox cluster. There are lots of moderately to very expensive proprietary solutions that do this, but I am unaware of any decent opensource options. Are you guys aware of anything that solves these two use cases well and is opensource?
• davidgerard 1y ago
  I got a Synology on friends' recommendations in 2018 and have always regretted not getting a secondhand Microserver Gen 8 instead. Next household samba box will probably be something with an N150 and unfeasible amounts of M.2.