Is there a good reason for Synology to change the support of “Unverified Drives” in DSM?
Synology has long been regarded as one of the most user-friendly and reliable NAS brands in the market, balancing intuitive software with a wide hardware range that appeals to both home and business users. However, in recent years the company has taken an increasingly controversial path by enforcing strict compatibility requirements for hard drives and SSDs. Beginning with DSM 7 and escalating into the 2025 generation of devices, Synology now only certifies and supports its own branded storage media, effectively locking out many widely used alternatives from Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba. While Synology positions this move as a way to ensure system stability and consistency, the decision has sparked significant backlash among users who feel restricted in their options and burdened by higher costs. As competitors expand their ecosystems with more openness and flexibility, this proprietary approach risks damaging Synology’s reputation, raising questions about whether the company has prioritized profit margins over user choice.
What is the MAIN PROBLEM(s) with this decision by Synology?
The most immediate problem with Synology’s hard drive policy is the loss of flexibility that once made their systems so appealing. For years, customers could select from a wide range of industry-standard drives from Seagate, Western Digital, or Toshiba, tailoring storage to their budget, performance requirements, or regional availability. This freedom not only allowed users to balance cost and capacity, but also gave small businesses and home enthusiasts the ability to reuse existing drives, upgrade incrementally, or take advantage of promotions from different vendors. By restricting DSM compatibility to Synology-labelled drives, that flexibility is gone. For many users outside major markets, Synology’s drives are harder to source, priced higher than the competition, or limited in available capacities. What once felt like an open platform now increasingly resembles a closed ecosystem, where users must accept the vendor’s terms even if it means compromising on affordability or performance.
Another dimension of the problem lies in how Synology has communicated these changes, which many see as evasive or disingenuous. Officially, the company justifies the restriction as a move toward greater reliability and predictable system performance. The argument is that by narrowing the range of drives tested and supported, Synology can optimize DSM to work seamlessly with drives that have firmware tailored for its environment. In practice, though, the same underlying hardware often originates from Seagate or Toshiba, with only minor firmware adjustments and new branding. This creates a perception that Synology is overstating the technical benefits while quietly using the policy to secure higher margins. For long-time users, the contrast is stark: older models happily ran third-party drives with few issues, which makes the sudden insistence on “certification” seem less like an engineering requirement and more like a business maneuver. The result has been a significant erosion of trust between the company and its community.
The wider impact of this strategy has also been felt across the storage industry. Resellers have reported declining sales of Synology’s Plus series devices as customers explore alternatives such as QNAP, TrueNAS, or newer entrants like UGREEN and UniFi. For Synology, this shift is particularly damaging because its reputation has historically rested on attracting less technical buyers who value simplicity and reliability over DIY solutions. Now, even these entry-level and mid-range users are questioning whether they should commit to an ecosystem that limits their choice of drives and increases their costs. At the same time, hard drive manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital are also affected, as Synology’s decision reduces the number of channels through which their products reach end customers. The ripple effect is therefore twofold: Synology risks alienating its base of loyal customers, while storage vendors lose a once-reliable partner, creating tension that could ultimately push more buyers toward competing NAS brands.
How Can Synology Solve This (if they want to)?
One path forward for Synology would be to adopt a hybrid compatibility model, where its own branded drives remain the recommended or default choice but third-party alternatives are still officially supported. This compromise has been proven by other vendors such as UniFi and QNAP, who sell their own labelled drives while maintaining compatibility lists for major manufacturers like Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba. By following this model, Synology could continue promoting the reliability benefits of its branded hardware without alienating customers who prefer flexibility. In practice, this would preserve a sense of choice for users while ensuring Synology can still highlight its “optimized” solutions as the safer, supported route.
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Finally, Synology could address the availability and pricing concerns around its own branded drives. In many regions, these drives are either difficult to source or significantly more expensive than equivalent Seagate or Western Digital models. Improving distribution channels, ensuring consistent stock, and narrowing the price gap would make the transition more palatable to users who are willing to adopt Synology’s ecosystem but feel penalized by limited access. By focusing on accessibility and fairness rather than exclusivity, Synology could rebuild goodwill while still driving revenue from its hardware strategy. Taken together, these steps would not fully reverse the controversy but would demonstrate responsiveness and provide a clearer path to balancing stability, customer choice, and profitability.
Is there a way to FORCE a Synology NAS to accept unverified Hard Drives and SSDs in DSM?
For users unwilling to accept Synology’s restrictive stance on storage media, the community has developed reliable workarounds that re-enable full functionality for third-party hard drives and SSDs. The most widely adopted method involves injecting a script into the NAS system that bypasses DSM’s compatibility database, allowing otherwise unsupported drives to be used for installation, storage pools, caching, and expansion. Synology’s 2025 Plus-series models, such as the DS925+, block DSM installation if only unverified drives are present and issue constant warnings in Storage Manager. To overcome this, users first employ a Telnet-based flag during initial setup that tricks DSM into accepting the installation, followed by a more permanent fix applied through SSH. At the heart of this solution is Dave Russell’s (007revad) GitHub project Synology_HDD_db, which modifies DSM’s internal drive compatibility files. Once downloaded and executed via SSH, the script detects the NAS model, DSM version, and connected drives, then patches the system to treat them as officially supported.
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The process is reversible, non-destructive, and works across multiple DSM versions, including DSM 7.2 and later. Additional features allow removal of persistent warning banners, full use of NVMe drives as storage volumes, and optional disabling of intrusive monitoring services like WDDA. To ensure ongoing stability, users can also configure a scheduled task in DSM’s Task Scheduler that re-applies the script at every boot, guaranteeing compatibility survives updates, reboots, or new drive insertions. While the script is robust and actively maintained, there are clear disclaimers: using it involves modifying system files, may void official Synology support, and should only be attempted by users confident with SSH and terminal commands who have reliable data backups. Nonetheless, for advanced users, system integrators, and enthusiasts, this community-driven solution has become the de facto method of restoring the freedom to use affordable and widely available third-party drives in modern Synology NAS systems.
Example of a 30TB Seagate HDD visible and functioning inside a Synology DS925+
Note – You can follow my guide on how to use this script modification (as well as outlining the pros and cons) HERE on the blog, or watch the video below:
The Future of Synology in the eyes of new and old buyers?
Synology’s decision to enforce exclusive support for its own branded hard drives and SSDs marks one of the most controversial shifts in the company’s history, transforming how both long-time customers and potential buyers view the brand. For over a decade, Synology’s appeal rested on a combination of intuitive software, solid hardware, and flexibility in allowing users to choose their own storage media from trusted vendors like Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. By removing that choice in the 2025 generation, Synology has fundamentally altered the value proposition of its systems, making them appear less like open storage platforms and more like tightly controlled appliances. While the company justifies the policy by citing stability, predictability, and reduced support overhead, many users interpret it as a profit-driven attempt to push proprietary drives into the market, especially since these are often rebranded versions of third-party disks with modified firmware and higher price tags.
The backlash has been considerable, with resellers and community forums reporting falling interest in Synology’s Plus-series devices, particularly among home and small business users who previously embraced them for affordability and ease of expansion. Competing NAS providers such as QNAP, TrueNAS, UGREEN, and UniFi have been quick to capitalize on the discontent, positioning themselves as more open alternatives that maintain compatibility with industry-standard drives. At the same time, the growth of unofficial solutions like Dave Russell’s compatibility script demonstrates how determined users are to regain control over their hardware, even at the risk of voiding warranty or stepping outside official support. This dynamic reflects a widening gap between Synology’s official direction and the needs of its customer base, many of whom would prefer to accept a disclaimer about using unverified drives rather than being forced into a closed ecosystem.
Ultimately, Synology now stands at a crossroads that will define its reputation in the storage industry for years to come. If it continues to double down on a closed, proprietary model, the company may secure short-term revenue through drive sales but risks long-term damage to its image and market share. On the other hand, reintroducing a more flexible, transparent approach—such as allowing user consent for unsupported drives or improving global pricing and availability of its own disks—could restore trust and preserve its standing as the NAS brand of choice for both novices and professionals. The availability of community workarounds ensures that frustrated users are not entirely locked out of their systems, but the very existence of these tools highlights how far Synology has drifted from its once customer-first ethos. The next few years will be crucial, as the company either adjusts course and strikes a balance between profitability and user freedom, or risks ceding ground to rivals who are eager to embrace the openness Synology has chosen to leave behind.
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In my region (Belarus) HAT3310-8 costs 80% more than Seagate Ironwolf 8tb.
400 usd vs 245 usd.
It’s crazy.
Bye-bye Synology, hello asus and ugreen.
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Use “mkdir -p” to avoid errors if the directory already exists.
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They should go the apple route, if they think they are apple! (Writing this as a longtime apple and sinology user) Means, make a webshop of only equipped devices! Chose our device as pro or enterprise, your need of storage, Option of 10GB later is possible or not and chache drives or not. Make support as a subscription, etc. Then the customer has the whole prize of what he needs! In this circumstances selling empty drivebays only scams the people who don’t know…
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Even on windows there’s no need to use Putty these days ssh works from the terminal / powershell same as in Linux.
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Which brand has the more family friendly mobile app to back up the phone?
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Does anyone have any experience with other NAS/Photos apps similar to DSM Photos? I am looking to get a NAS just for photo storage, and one of the main reasons I am considering a Synology is because of the software.
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returned my 1525+ and ordered a QNAP instead…never again, they lost me as client after 20 years!
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I no longer care what Synology does. I ditched my Synolgoy NAS for a Proxmox server running True NAS Scale along with other VMs. Works quite well and I get to decide how it can be used.
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Welcome to the rant room. With reason I think, it is a lovely room!
I personally think Synology is going to regret their decisions. If first party drives, Seagate, Toshiba, WD, etc. are not supported for the 2025 plus series very soon, people will indeed look elsewhere. The competition is catching up very fast at the moment. Although their products might not be an exact drop in replacement for a Synology NAS, they definitely offer solutions that will do a good 80% of the functionality most people need.
For me the same thing applies. I seriously doubt that my next NAS device will be a Synology 2025 plus series. I might look for a 2024 plus series or a 2025 regular series. Ok that script might work but Synology can also decide, if they are completely out of their minds, to drop any warranty on any device if their technicians see that the script is present. Imagine having spend close to 1000 EUR/GBP/USD or more on your new shiny NAS with first party disks (Seagate, Toshiba, WD) that Synology don’t consider compatible. You have important data on that device. Ok you have external backups you can restore but the NAS itself has been declared out of warranty because Synology doesn’t want to deal with your new 2025 purchase that has run into an issue and they have found an easy way out to deny you your warranty. That would be an extremely bad scenario.
A different scenario, let’s say I do get a 2025 plus series and load it with Synology branded drives. What guarantee do I have that Synology retailers are able to deliver me a replacement drive when I need one? Will retailers keep enough of these drives in stock in two or three years from now? It is a serious risk if they are not able to ship me a new drive within 24-48 hours. I obviously have my backups and will therefore not loose any data. However I would like to make sure that the NAS will be able to rebuilt the array as soon as possible with fresh replacement drive.
So yes, the jury has not reached a decision yet but there have been way to many discussions about these new policies. And I am afraid that the fact that after 100+ days there are still no drives by other brands on the Synology compatibility list might swing things in a different direction.
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Thank you indeed for this video. I was considering one of the new Synology NAS’. I didn’t skip, I watched your initial info. At the end of that I stopped. I already own some brand new sealed WD drives. The NAS would only be for home use, but given Synology could deliberately break this hack, I’ll steer clear. It is now 6 months since the 2025 Synology systems launched and they haven’t certified or allowed use of any other manufacturer drives as I type this, so it looks like they just won’t. To make more money I supppose. For anyone with existing other drives, old or new, it stinks. Thanks again.
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If they are to add drives, I bet they’d keep the “3rd party” drives to up to 16TB. Nasty company…. whoever is responsible for this “verified disk” bullshit – you deserve a cancer !!!
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Thank you!!
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i did listen to the disclaimer this time lol
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hello, work for ds423+? thakyou sir
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If I can use any HDD in a 2025 Synology NAS, I will most definitely be buying Synology again. If not, then there are so many other brands to choose from, I’ll be heading to them instead. The ball is in Synology’s court but the final play will be decided by the consumer.
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The brand destruction Synology is commiting at the moment is absolutely astounding. They’re never coming back from this.
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The Synology drive have already dropped in price 4TB 110€ on Amazon.
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It seems to me like they are leaving the small office/home office segment behind and concentrating on the enterprise segment
You say that Synology plus HDDs are similar in price to WD and Seagate. On the shop I most often use they are about the same price as WD Red Pro, 10% more than Seagate IronWolf Pro and 20% more than Toshiba N300. I’ve been buying Toshiba NAS drives for the last decade. Adding 20% to the HDD budget isn’t likely to happen, as I already have paid more for the HDDs than for the NASs they are in
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This worked for my partially… Drives are showing healthy and detected now, but when I try to create a shr-2 or raid 6 storage pool it fails.
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Synology: “We’ve made our product more reliable by blocking third party products” The customers: “Fine, we’ll then run unverified scripts from the internet as root on the NAS”. Honestly, all of this from Synology feels like anti-trust. There is no legitimate reason to block third party drives. Fine if they would’ve limited support, but these official drives are also even just rebadged Toshiba drives.
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It’s simple. Synology the company became allergic to money. Happens when you don’t innovate over 10 years.
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YOU SAVED MY LIFEEEEEE!!!! THANK YOU!!!!
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Synology is pushing for the enterprise money, and boy the enterprise is not there for Synology.
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Good job!
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As an owner of 4 Synology NAS, all maxxed out with 3 x 36 (DS3611xs, DS3612xs, DS 3615xs) drives and 1 x 20 (DS2015xs) drives, I do spend quite a bit on spare and replacement drives. When they fail I want compatible drives to be a 15minute drive away. So… my latest NAS is a 7 drive UNAS, lost some efficiency in RAID6, but the drives are available. Looking at QNAP for the next couple of arrays.
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I have had my current Synology for many years but its now starting to struggle, looks like I will be getting another brand as this kind of skullduggery is just not on in my books, they have lost me as a future customer.
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I’m glad I saw all of this before I got a NAS. Going TueNAS instead. i5 10400 ITX build in a Jonsbo N3 with 4 x 16TB
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Omg :-). I am thinking of bying a new NAS, but have seen this synology anti consumer practice. Will need to rethink which NAS solution would be the best for me, this workaround is too much of a hassle for me
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I honestly think that just apologizing would do alot to bring people back to Synology. They need to openly admit they screwed the pooch hard on this one, apologize for overstepping and lying about saying the policy was about compatability and such. Because they insulted our intelligence to give us this nonsense about how suddenly 3rd party drives don’t work even though the hardware is the same. People don’t like it when a company treats them like an idiot. So Synology has to be brutally honest about how bad they f’ed up and fire the person in charge of this decision to show they’re serious.
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This a clear sign that Synology are now being run by financiers not engineers. Ever since Tim Cook took over Apple completely, on Steve Job’s unfortunate demise, the same has been happening to Apple. And it is a recipe for decline in market share and, eventually, revenue and profitability. I’ve been using Synology for 15 years, the two I have will be the last and they are 4 years old now. “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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It would be like a Toyota that only could drive on Toyota tires. Put on Goodyear, Continental, Pirelli, Toyo tires and the car cannot be driven?
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A friend of mine bought the DS925+ because he was actually satisfied with Synology and didn’t know that he had to buy the in-house model.
I don’t know his old model, but it still had 3TB WD Green drives in it.
The update should now be to 8TB. He bought Seagate and Toshiba, both costing €170 each, while Synology wanted €230 for one drive. The DS925+ was returned as defective, and I also ordered one, which Amazon also received back as defective after a few days.
I set up an Unraid for him, and he is satisfied. Everything is significantly faster and smoother, even though he had to get used to it at first.
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Proprietary drives have nothing to do with stability and everything to do with money. Synology = modern day Judas. People have already found work arounds for this giving Synology a kick in the backside and when other companies start giving better operating systems, better hardware for the same buck, buuubbbiiieeee greedy goblins at SINology.
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I got 1 drive that still appears to be unknown what can I do?? rerun?
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GOD solution Thx
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{“success”: false} with brand new DS725+
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I’m not a tech person at all. I’m just looking for a NAS to run PLEX (for both local and out of network users) and maybe for my audio books and music. Is that QNAP?
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One word: Enshittification. Not helpful, however I’ll be looking at other outfits for any kind of NAS or simple backup solutions. Will miss the Synology software package but that’s simply too bad.
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So I just took a look and since release of the 925+ they haven’t added any drives until 4 weeks ago. They have since added 3 Synology drives, including 1 about a week ago. So seems activity on drive compatibility may be picking up. I know most of you don’t care, just an observation.
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Time to dump Synology and look at alternatives, Sick of companies restricting what we can do and use.
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So Seagate make Synology but Seagate drives aren’t good enough for their 2025 nas’s
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⚠ *Fact 1: Synology has been rock solid for many years* we have been using it with all disks from the market. ????
⚠ *Fact 2: That’s why Synology is lying* to its customers. ????
⚠ *Fact 3: And that’s why Synology is only interested in greed.* ????
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My view is and will probably always be this:
If “you” as a designer and engineer need to limit compatibility to your own brand of (whatever product), I should probably NOT buy it.
Not because you removed my choice in brands to buy, but because you can’t write code well enough to get your idea to work with everything on the market.
If you have to lock it down to a brand and not just a size range of drives to “maintain stability”, you obviously can’t write a robust code I should trust and are telling me this directly.
So I take that at your word, your a rubbish product creator and know it.
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DS225+ is ok to use other HDD ? or only DS925 had ban other?
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Thanks for the video….I get a permission error, like i am not in the sudoers but i am in the administrators group in the nas….what could be the problem?
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I bought my first Synology 1010 in 2010. Have had nothing but Synology’s since. Even if they reverse this stupid decision, they have lost me as a customer. I wont waste my time on a company that treats their customers like idiots. I will go to another brand out of pure spite.
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As a diyer this feels.. vindicating
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damn, just bought DS725+ and SSD WD Red today, please help me what it’s work?
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These videos are good. I’m not a member or IT specialist. I’m just an old boy who likes to retain control of his data and tinker. You can ramble your ears off, I love your soapbox. Thank you.
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Eddie’s recent video made me realise how dated the Synology device setup is. I would need a list of settings and configuration steps instead of a decent wizard. As a home user, my loyalty and opinion of Synology is going down the toilet.
Let’s hope Synology take notice of the leading NAS channels. Keep it coming Robbie, thank you.
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It’s like other companies when they getting to big they forget the real money there customers and fanbase ex Like Nintendo that don’t care about their customers and fans anymore. They focus only on money and forget who it is that give them money and pay them their salaries. The most important thing for a real good business is its customers and fans without that they actually stop to exist. Every company get their customer because of a good product that has high quality and good options for their customers if Synologo removes all drives except their own brand they are absolutely going to lose customers it’s actually a very very bad decision from Synology that is hard to understand actually. If WD red drives isn’t working on an Synology NAS o boy they are going to lose multiple big customers because they put limitations on their product trying to box people in their bubble. It’s like Nintendo with the switch 2 trying to harvest peoples money for a bad product. Tanks for an interesting video I didn’t know about this but now I do
????❤️????
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I recently had to buy another NAS, I actually bought one of the earlier models instead. IF I had to purchase another NAS, I would only consider buying a 25 model if they certified other makes – I would never do it on a their potential intention
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I’m just getting into this field and I was looking to buy my first solution this month. I was considering this brand before, but now I think I will look elsewhere. Thank you for the information.
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In my opinion, you can make vids like this members only, They’ve shown who they are. I have a 1522+ and it’s been relegated to backing up my Asus NVME NAS. As far as I’m concerned New Synologys no longer exists. They’re like a Bugatti, impressive but requires too much to operate and maintain. I really don’t understand why they don’t just sell them with their own drives populated at this point.
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As a longtime Synology user and fan, I’ve really appreciated what they’ve brought to the NAS market over the years. However, rising prices and the increasing availability of older PCs—paired with excellent open-source solutions like TrueNAS—are making DIY NAS setups far more appealing. It’s also hard to ignore Synology’s recent shift toward proprietary drives, which feels more like a protective move than an innovation. I truly hope they course-correct, but for now, it seems they’re drifting away from what made them great.
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The same LIES that all server companies say.
…Synology is dead to me now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Nice solution, I also thought that I would add the script to the Task planer when I have a customer with the new Synology box.
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Power consumption was an equal factor in NAS and I’m not a data hog (<4TB currently). I wanted a solution to house & own our photos & vids, so truenas+immich on a beelink mini me made sense. Cost savings over years with low power will be $50-$100/yr. Bought 4x WD 7100 4TB drives. Pricy, but ok. Portable USB drives serve as backups with USB3. Works well so far. iCloud fees will be dropped and we own this in house. Truenas makes it easy - hardware failure and it's solved with either a new Mini ME, or just use a flash drive for boot, then upload the Truenas settings, and we are rolling again!
Also having a firewall with external VPN is great for remote access.
I'm sure synology is great (like apple), but I'm not interested.
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I never understood why people want all these, call it “smart TV”-features.. all I want a NAS to do is;
1. be reliable, 2. easy to swap drives if one fails, 3. give me a network share across my devices…
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I went to Terra Master with a lot of my stuff. Has also a Hybrid RAID. For a normal NAS, I think the Software isn’t much worse. It is stable. It has a lot of Apps – Not as much as Synology, but enough for me. And I had an 8-bay plus-series NAS and a 12-bay plus-series NAS of Synology before. They devalueted my Videostation Database work because they didn’t bother and then they made the change in hard drive policy. If you make a NAS with lots of drives, the premium for the Synology drives is as high than purchasing a whole second NAS. And they are only smaller drives. Sorry. Synology has to make a big step to win me back.
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Yeah like I’ve said earlier, the harddrive compatibility lock was one step too far. I’ve switched to qnap and I won’t switch back until I can’t use any drive I want.
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I hate the way they are going. Im a first time NAS user and was looking fwd to their 2025 series. I actually went and got an old ds 923+ so i can throw in WD drives.
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Feels like they days when people bypassed windows authentication. It is a good work around and thank you. However, is synology that good? synology could easily change it. For me, it is simply not worth the risk of losing data and support . Yep – I watched the full disclaimer.
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Had Synology for nearly 10 years, 3 NASs, but I’m already tinkering with TrueNAS, I won’t be buying anymore, my needs have matured and Synology is too expensive to meet those needs, add this drive nonsense to it and yeah………we’re going our separate ways
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I love computers, as such, I have several NAS vendor’s appliances, the decision a while back to not show SMART for unsupported drives was insane to me, this is just a continuation of.
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Too much work for BS from a company, will not buy a synology for sure.
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We have a Synology at work for the free MS 365 backups and it’s working great for that but we now have need for a couple more NAS’s but I would not buy a Synology now for these projects due to these decisions from Synology
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So no Synology hdd in my nas.
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I remember someone else doing this, a company called Apple! Yes they had custom firmware on their scsi drives!
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So glad I chose QNAP
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I have had my Synology DS1520+ for almost five years and love it. I would not be adverse to having to buy Synology drives, as long as they are as good as the Iron Wolf drives I bought with my NAS and as competitively priced. Having said that I hate it when OEMs artificially restrict the market dynamics in this way as it always does end in tears for the OEM. Going all the way back to Sony and Betamax even though Betamax provided better quality it lost out due to the restrictive licensing arrangements for the tapes, as well as shorter recording times which I don’t remember being an issue. You then have Canon and the RF mount for full frame camera and not allowing third party manufactures make RF mount lenses. Canon has faced a barrage of criticism and they are slowly allowing other manufactures in, but have lost a lot of good will in the process and maybe market share? I have seen other businesses mess about with the brand and their marketing mix with catastrophic consequences. It could make sense for a major disk manufacturer to get into building NAS devices, a tidy bit of vertical integration and “parking tanks” on Synology’s lawn.
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It’s time for Unraid.
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Your buying something that should be working properly and you need to troubleshoot it on day 1. ????????
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I was looking for Synology now ik have buy Ugreen and it work perfect
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Pissing off your loyal fan base who have stuck with you for past 5-10years and promoted your products. These are not the type of customers you can easily acquire off the street
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It doesn’t matter if Synology goes back. I’m in the middle of getting hexos working on an old server I acquired. While it’s not as user friendly and I don’t quite understand the software yet, I’m trying to get out of Synology and sell my two 1621+ units asap
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Vote for public post. Light user of my DS920+ and Crucial MX500 SSD drives. Considering upgrade to new Synology, but won’t b/c of the drive issue. Can’t afford Synology drives. Sadly will now explore other options for upgrading. They had the sale. It was theirs to lose.
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What Synology’s greed has achieved was to start digging its own grave.
Until now, they haven’t been afraid of Asustor, QNAP, etc., even with low-spec hardware, but their timing for this shit is incredible (in a bad way)! It’s only a matter of time before UGreen destroys Synology.
We’ve all seen this movie countless times, with a Chinese company entering a new market and (practically) decimating the competition.
Well done, Synology!..
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I’ve now given up on Synology. Homebrew NAS is what I’ve been doing lately. More powerful, excellent learning platform and generally a far better bang for the buck. What Synology possibly doesn’t realise is that some home users are also in a position to advise hardware purchasing at their place of work. In the past I have pushed for my company to purchase Synology. Now, I would advise that they don’t touch Synology with a barge pole if I was asked.
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I’m glad this all happened when it did and not a year later, I just did a huge upgrade to my original DS918+ and you already know I went with QNAP.
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Revenue, mark up – they don’t make drives. They rebrand someone else’s.
And the legal bit – probably ????
thank you. You are super.
There is also a deal to be had with hdd manufacturers and synology- just a thought
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Next NAS will not be an Synology
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Have been a VERY loyal Synology user for well over a decade and I will never buy another one of their devices, EVER, until this + policy is reversed.
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The only explanation I could think of is that Synology leadership has gone all in on put options and are driving down the stock price as much as possible.
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Now that toshiba has an excellent and affordable enterprise sata line with non volatile cache allowing write back speed performance with write through reliability, I’m not interested in anything else, especially synolog’s overpriced bottom barrel oem relabeled drives.
My unit is getting old. If I had to replace it today, I’d get something else. It was already hard to swallow the idea of not using standard formats locking me into synology for recovery.
Their software _was_ good, but it’s been stagnant for years now. They’re still on a 3.x kernel for crying out loud. I can’t even get a network stack that can replicate well over links with more than 15-25ms latency.
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i still pick up nettapp stuff and jail break them , ps Toshiba and Seagate make the SYNOLOGY drives
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Don’t forget that in 5 years time when you experience a drive failure the potential is that Synology might not be able to obtain a compatible spare and leave you locked-in and without a replacement drive. Happens all the time due to the dynamics of storage media.
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Watching out of curiosity…
I bought a QNAP 8 bay NAS.
Later unconverted it to (installed) TrueNAS. So now I’m running TrueNAS Community edition on QNAP hardware. TrueNAS is a big step up for me. Pro-style OS rather than simple / simplified OS approach.
BTW i was using QNAP style ZFS filesystem, which is highly proprietary vs OpenZFS, used by TrueNAS.
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There are plenty of small/ medium sized businesses where if they lose their data they are out of business. Synology has always had a better reputation in that segment than a brand like QNAP (unless one goes back to the times before either brand existed, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we used Iomega Bernoulli drives, and back then no non-OEM disks existed for those). That is part of how Synology has been able to charge significantly more than QNAP on a regular basis for what seems to be reasonably comparable hardware. I have not seen the Synology EULA, and I presume that they are protecting themselves as much as they can, but it would be easier to deflect blame for data loss if one is using an “unsupported” or “incompatible” drive. There is more potential liability if they are selling the drives under their own brand.
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Am I the only one who finds it incredibly difficult if not downright impossible to focus on these videos as he’s MANICALLY opening and closing windows and zooming all around them at 4x speed for no apparent reason? It’s so dizzyingly distracting that I have to turn my screen off and just listen without all of that unnecessary visual overload.
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The BS smell is strong with this propaganda. Anything that locks you into a proprietary model that is normally pretty generic is nothing but a lock in for their benefit. A short sighted greed that will bite them. Once they have this level of monopoly,they can dictate a lot of other stuff like annual subscriptions that you are now locked into.Also shaking down HDD manufacturers to ” add” their disks to the approved list. Remember Juicero! Synonymous with everything bad about proprietary IOT and what happens when they decide there is not enough profit in a business. Made up my mind that building my own NAS with a more powerful CPU and generic HDD is the only way to go. I have control at all times now and in the future.
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if synology 100% promise their drive won’t fail at lease 5 years, I have not issue against them, but will they?!
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The imaginary beauty would be that All hdd manufacturers have their own priorities and saying to sin.no.logic to fly kite. The end of monopoly.
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My DS1520+ has 20TB drives in it. Synology doesn’t even SELL a 20tb drive. So what do they expect me to do huh?
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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, it was recommended to use hard drives of different production dates or even brands in RAID arrays to minimize the risk of simultaneous failures due to manufacturing defects.
What about all this now that the only possible supplier is Synology?
At that time, some manufacturers also offered hard drives that were supposedly suitable for video surveillance. Is this really the case for Synology hard drives?
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Clippy will crush scumbag synology and make them kneel! Clippy is the strongest and will resist! Resistance is not futile!
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Thank you for open this to everyone!
It feels a bit nostalgic in this room and hearing some well known sounds from outside…
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First off, loved the video and love the idea of “The RAID Room”. Get this on podcast platforms that I can listen in my car! Nothing would make me happier than the smooth sounds of Robbie’s voice crusing down the freeway.
Next, your portion on the views/comments on these videos couldn’t possibly be more accurate. The only thing I’ll add is that in my case, they are literally 95% negative towards Synology. In normal videos, of course there are negative comments but generally, the positive comments outweigh the negative comments towards either the platform, video idea, etc. For Synology, it’s so overwhelmingly negative. It makes it hard to tell if there genuinely are people who don’t care about the HDD requirements or if they’re just too scared to comment, but either way, negative comments have become a staple.
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Hi Robbie, while I am as cynical as the next guy, there might be a point here. For years, Synology has had this habit of crashing and burning when creating pools. You will get a critical error with no explanation on a drive that is working perfectly. this is a very common problem, especially on the DX 517 expansion box. Wipe everything, try it again, and it works fine and forever. Whether these kinds of glitches have to do with drive firmware, eSata comms or something in the OS is an unanswered question but it’s possible that Synology is just trying to get better control over their ecosystem to reduce their support load. That story would be a whole lot more believable if they weren’t charging 2X for their drives, so like I said, I’m as cynical as the next guy…
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“Stable system” is just marketing term for I want to extract more money. As Synology doesn’t make hdd there is no difference to 3rd party and in house drives
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I use synology and have done from early dsm 6.1 and thought it was leaps and bounds above the rest mostly from there apps not there hardware. But now I am watching zimaos as I think synology is focusing on business sales rather than personal diyers and zima is now going to fill a void appearing in the market.
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I will go for a Ugreen 8-Bay-NAS. I really would like to see a 12 Bay Version.
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I did this a bit different. I prep a new Toshiba drive in my DS218+ then migrated it
to my DS425+ then added the scheduled task and run it I then powered down added
a 2nd Toshiba drive and 2x exos powered it back up and run the script via scheduled task
again and all is good. The one thing I’m still looking for as I have 2x Toshiba MG08 is a way
to cross flash the firmware so they are running Synology firmware and ID as Synology HDDs.
A Toshiba MG Series 12TB cost £244 on Amazon and the Synology HAT5300 12TB cost £474
The Synology HAT3310 12TB cost £246 as the Toshiba MG Series is classed as Enterprise
and the Synology HAT5300 is Enterprise that’s a better comparison to the MG Series and the
HAT3310 is more like the Toshiba N300/N300 Pro.
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Certainly compromised their market in this area. I also don’t think they have the clout in the next level up against Nimble, HPE, EMC and such.
The plus software is good and only reason I’m still using them. I wish I’d gone for a 4 bay over the eight though. Why as I’d gone for a SSD, 10GbE solution for the Iscsi / nfs from TrueNas 9n ugreen hardware.
A smaller Synology for pc and office 365 backups with office replication to a 2 bay unit.
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Appreciate your thoughts on the synology shenanigans. Totally feel this shouldn’t be a locked down style of video. Having the “raid room” videos every two weeks or once a month would be great to see. Just a nice sum up of your thoughts and it becomes a causal thing where if it happens cool, if not that’s cool too.
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look – i have a 923+, and it’s great. i will NEVER buy another synology device again, only for the fact that they are “not giving users a choice” as to what HDDs to use with the new generation ones. *EVEN IF* the synology drives were price compatible – the not-giving-a-choice is a non starter for me. especially since the ’25 series is the same architecture that mine has. it’s sleazy. don’t warranty it = FINE. suggest not using third party = FINE. but software locking the device to not work right out of the box = Nope.
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I’ve got a 418, my next one is going to be a Ugreen NAS. Simple as that. Synology is going to find out what FAFO means the hard way.
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NO more Synology for me
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I have an old DS1520+, I’ve been looking at upgrading to better networking conditions, I would like to know which would be the most suitable for my Seagate drives?
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I enjoyed the RAID Room format! I’m a novice, who uses a 918+ and a 1522+. I could never maintain a NAS without Synology’s turnkey stuff. I won’t need any more hardware for years, but I worry their loss of market share will impact other Synology services I use- like Active Backup.
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This is the prime reason and i feel completely justified now in building my my own NAS with a Jonsbo N2 and N100 NAS motherboard from Aliexpress. Not only do i have full control over repairability of individual parts, i have more powerful hardware and have a opensource OS on it and don’t to deal with any proprietary BS. Synology is in no position to be this arrogant especially when there is more competition now more than ever.
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My problem is they only sell up to 16TB Plus drives. If I am going to eventually replace my current DS1510, they will need to provide a solution that has the newest drives available (up to 30TB) so I can efficiently use the space on the new array. My 5x16TB array is already full.
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lol… screw them.
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Please keep videos like this coming. There is no such thing as too much information, especially when so many of us are trying to get the best bang for our buck$. Potential shoppers will be compelled to invest their $’s to other manufacturers or go the route of DYI. I honestly wouldn’t consider Synology even though they have great products and reputation…until now.
*Thanks for the video!*
A Loyal ???????? Viewer
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Like it or not, I’ll just say it.
Xpenology is the solution.
If you have proper 3-2-1 backup there’s no issue.
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Lol Synology was once a great company… Ugreen and others have shown how Synology have been ripping ppl off with their low spec hardware
Synology became money hungry
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Synology is doing this for one reason. Delusions of being a true business NAS and not consumer friendly.
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I ditched Synology a month ago, and bought a NUC with a DAS external 4-drive bay with a 10Gb connection. Installed Linux with ZFS filesystem. Now I can install any software I want on my “NAS” box.
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lol @ “the raid room” for the series name… it’s catchy ????
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my 12 year old DS1813+ is still working fine for me, and i just added 2.5gbe to it. This will be a only and last synology i buy, the cost and limits on HD are major off putting.
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After years and countless Synology purchases (DS/RS Plus series) for myself and clients, my next one will not be a Synology. Two words: stupidity and greed. Even if they backtrack, goodwill is lost. I won’t be coming back.
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Wow!! Big reveal, so Synology was totally unstable before? If they are doing this to make it stable, then people must have had a lot of issues due to the drives they were using. Funny how I’ve never heard of people having issues – except for those duped into buying SMR drives perhaps, mostly by the scurrilous activities at WD. Hardware still sucks relative to competitors – they should have been at the forefront. And they are quite expensive, and that has fed into the rest of the market, others are now selling at similar products. They are damaging their reputation.
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Another comment for the c**w**s in Synology leadership: I was initially really happy about my 1522+. Slightly high price for yesteryear’s hardware, but “it’s boring in the good sense, it just *works* and the OS is good”… got slightly sour when I realised non-Synology NVMes can only be used as cache if you don’t resort to hacks… and now the move towards requiring their branded not-actually-better-than-consumer drives for consumer level hardware?
I understand the requirement in enterprise setups with availability guarantees, same-day fly-in technicians (…), but for consumer products… well, f*** you, money-grabbin CEOs, I hope you get your share of videogame plumbers. I won’t buy another Synology product in my life.
I hope they get obliterated by TrueNAS in the enterprise space, and that or HexOS on the consumer end.
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I already bought ds 725+.. is it ok if i use SSD wd red sa500?
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The Synology low end products are still at the top price-wise. The other vendors don’t seem to have a problem with profit margins on their own products that still cost less than Synology.
I think Synology is just trying to focus on enterprise businesses who will pay more for a product and components that all come from the same vendor.
I’m perfectly fine with that. I’ll be glad to buy from other vendors in the space who want my business.
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Why they doing this:
Synology : I’m stupid
Ugreen= Smiling and more dinero
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The answer is to sell more…skip the rest.
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Stop making excuses for Synology.
Synology DOES NOT MANUFACTURE hard drives or NVME drives!
They BUY lock them down with firmware!!!
Fuck them and their anti consumer bullshit.
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If there is an open source OS that can implement something like SHR…
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Fuck Synology!
Long live UGreen!
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This year I am skipping the Synology event in London. Really can’t be bothered with them at the moment.
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For my one data-point. I’ll always suggest a Truenas or similar to clients first , but many have loved the simplicity and familiarity of the Synology ecosystem. This is changing radically as clients don’t want to be boxed in when it comes to replacement hardware. It’s been great for the Unifi Nas though.
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I’ll speak up because I’m one of your viewers who frequent your channel because of its NAS-related content, but who doesn’t post many comments generally and if Synology is reading these comments…then all the better.
I own 2 Synology systems…a 1819+ and a 1821+. The latter was purchased when I saw that the 1823xs+ had an awful price-to-feature ratio and lacked features such as 2.5E that many other NAS companies embraced.
Around this time, I had also purchased an Asustech 2 bay NAS to evaluate their 2.5E product offerings and Synology was also glacially slow in approving new hard drives with greater TB capacity. (A problem which is still prevalent today…a few years later. Synology should hang their head in shame!)
I have zero interest or desire to purchase another Synology NAS. There are enough alternatives – Asustech, Ugreen, QNAP as well as TrueNAS and other solutions to turn to.
Synology had a great reputation and much goodwill in the NAS community. All of that has been destroyed with your corporate greed and questionable product decisions made these last 1-2 years.
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Synology is corporate greed when it is at its worse. I have a Synology now. It is getting old. I will not buy Synology again because of the HDD lock down. Never. And it spills into business too. If you treat me badly as private I also avoid you in the large company where I have influence.
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I have one issue with talking about identical architecture and that’s the switch of bus on the expansion unit. There is, potentially, a huge amount of re-testing of drives and working out the niggles, I haven’t looked into the change of bus in detail but the expansion unit is one area where there is a definite change in the product for DS923+ to DS925+.
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When I wanted to go to a rack mount chassis to replace my DS1821+ the hard disk limit was the deal breaker, my synology units are decommissioned and I’ve move to TrueNas Scale. It’s slightly more complicate but, there are youtube videos on how to configure, or you can try HexOS.
WD got 10x16TB disk order for my DIY system.
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Synology seem like they’ve made the same mistake Intel did years ago – they got *too comfortable* with their position in the market and got stagnant enough to allow their competition to show them up. Intel got dropped by Apple and AMD started fighting back.
Synology have gained easy sales for years because of their software and got lazy with their hardware revisions. The community has developed alternatives since then and the hardware is becoming such a limitation to long term users that building a DIY setup starts becoming the more logical options. We’re literally at a point where a £180 mini-pc with an N100 inside offers better value for money and you can use whatever drives you want with it.
If Synology refreshed their CPU lineup, 2.5Gbps Ethernet as a minimum on every port and gave us 2-3 USB ports I think people would be less harsh about the first party drive requirement. Sure people would still be annoyed about the lockout but at least we’d be seeing an improvement in the product somewhere.
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*What seems aberrant to me is the fact that they use the same HDDs from manufacturers that they call incompatible at this time… how the hell do you do that??? Rewrite a firmware and that’s it, it becomes the best HDD in the world?*
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Synology will not change their mind, they’re too greedy. That’s why I made my own dyi nas instead of buying the 925.
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I’m not a fan of the change but…….
My particular use case is for clients backing up their physical and virtual machines in a way that can be easily monitored and restored.
I’m mostly buying the Synology Active Backup for Business. The other options I’ve researched all either don’t have the reporting and ease of use or require recurring licensing fees that would consume and cost savings in a year.
The same software allows clients to be their own cloud backup for different locations without the cost of a cloud backup service.
I’m guessing my use case is a small sliver of their actual market. While their relative value drops with the hard drive restrictions, the value proposition remains better compared to other options that would be charging several hundred dollars a year for licensing.
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They have lost me as a future customer. My 723+ became a complete brick after 9 months of light use (On double surge protected battery backup power). They RMA’d it ok but I had to pay shipping one way. Maybe I got the one dud, it happens, but the OS is the real deal breaker. (Although the whole point of the hardware choice was to have low power draw with reliability from ECC ram and a professionally designed integrated product rather than an assembly of misc parts.)
DSM7 hides a ton of configuration in proprietary database files (encrypted or otherwise not readable nor simply modifiable), and they have removed my ability to do basic admin work like setting specific user ID and group ID (Forces first come first serve sequential user creation) which causes huge problems with the way I like to use NFS and backups.
(This is after I did a contortionist act to get a true root login.) Constantly pressing a bunch of large scale security that I don’t need or want for my insulated low user count environment.
I came from a DSM5 diskstation which had a few hoops to jump through, but down deep it used standard config files and Linux admin stuff.
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I’m not “okay” with it, but I’m also not so outraged I’m gonna go and stop using my unaffected 920+. I’ve read others indicate that’s what they are doing. I’m gonna use mine until I need to upgrade and will most likely find the best device for my needs at that time. I’m pretty sure it won’t be Synology… Even though I’ve been mostly happy with it.
Now if they made this change retroactive to older units… I’d be first in line for the torches and pitchforks ????
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People are still considering Synology? That software is good but not that good.
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I recently needed to upgrade from 2-bay to 4-bay and bought a DS423+, the older model. Synology has the best solution for home NAS today and it pains me to see how Masters of Business Administration also got to them. They are going to step out of the home and SMB market and become enterprise and dumb users only. UGREEN and the likes will be very happy to outperform and undercut them and take the enthusiast market. So my strategy with the 423+ is to hold out until either Synology backpedals or the UGREENs of this world catch up and replace them. I believe the latter is the case. It seems clear to me that Synology decided the enthusiast market is not worth being in any more and they are going enterprise on the one hand and “plug in and forget” Beestations on the other. Their strategy is to chase out the smart enthusiast users because they are too much of a pain. That is the typical MBA thought process. We will see what happens with them, but there is nothing we can do about it as users. Stop whining about Synology, I know it is a loss and we’ve invested a lot of time and effort in them. But they no longer deserve our attention. Simply forget about Synology and go somewhere else.
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Great video. I have already purchased another NAS (Unifi), due to the issue ongoing with Synology. Yes, because of price and I am not forced to by more expensive hard drives,
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SYN = Nonsense. HDD Manufacturers test their Firmware thoroughly on all kinds of Controllers & Operating Systems BEFORE selling Drives and issuing Warranties.
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So let me get this straight… synology uses hardware from the stoneage but also sells there NAS at a higher price point than almost everyone else who uses newer hardware…. but synology doesnt have any profit margin? Lmao. They are making great margins lets not lie to people.
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Synology is dead to me.
I have always like their hardware. Their products have been very stable with a relatively low power draw, albeit under powered, but it really came down to the software that pulled me in. From example, SHR is what Synology use to stand for. They saw a gap in market and were willing to invest in new technologies to both improve HDD interoperability and remove some of the common pain points related to traditional RAID configurations.
Now Synology is a just a shell of what they use to be. I cannot think of a single feature Synology has added in the past years that I care about. On the flip side of the coin, they’ve removed hardware transcoding, support for various video codecs, proper SMART reporting, support for various USB devices, Video Station application, various application functionality (Ex: motion detection in Surveillance Station), and now general hard drive support.
It feels like the people that made Synology great have left the company, leaving behind just the management and marketing teams. They can’t really create anything new or improve things, so they just stick with existing hardware configurations and start cutting out features in the name of “stability”.
If Synology actually cared about stability, they would outline a hard drive baseline specification and allow everything that meets or exceeds it. I in particular tend to overspend on hard drives, typically opting for WD Gold drives. They are not cost effective, but they are significantly more reliable as proven by the long running Backblaze Drive Statistic reports.
According to Synology, having a hard drive with both better specifications and reliability then their some cheap rebranded drives would their system less stable over all. Yeah, no, that’s not how things work. It’s painfully obvious the new restrictions are just a cash grab. Throwing warnings and erroneous error messages on the UI didn’t work, so Synology is now trying to force our hand.
The damage is done, and Synology has no good will left over in my book. It would take years of extremely pro consumer moves and other actual improvements for me to even consider another Synology product. The cynic in me expects Synology to rebrand to try to get away from the dumpster fire they created, but that never works.
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Another face-saving option for Synology is to add 3rd party drives that have been ‘certified’, and give the system the option to install the Synology firmware on. For example, you mentioned Seagate as a potential manufacturer for Synology-branded drives. If that’s the case, then Synology has their own firmware that runs on those Seagate drives. Have the system install the Synology firmware on the non-Synology-branded Seagate manufactured drives. Synology will lose out on a bit of income from their labeled drives, but they can save face that way.
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they shouldn’t lock down to their drives only, they should test and verify existing drives
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Used to love Synology, but now days its meh. Slow to release software updates, hardware line up is getting so costly for under powered devices. Now the HDD vendor lock in. After many decades of having a Synology, this one might be my last as I explore moving to other platforms.
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Totally a moot point for me. I’m BYOing my system from here on out. Too much proprietary garbage in these systems. Specifically a motherboard. If that dies, which it did on me a few years back, you are SOL and need to buy a complete new system as QNAP, and I would have to imagine Synology doesn’t keep spare parts 6 months after they stop selling the model. Meanwhile they still supported the hardware at the software level. Here on out its TrueNAS Scale + BYO system so I can swap out whatever if needed.
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I don’t see them pulling a u-turn. Synology pulled h265 and everyone seems to have completely forgotten.
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Synology is done. I love the software but the hardware options and games make QNAP a better option overall.
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F that. I just got out of the Apple walledd garden… No freaking ready I’m getting into another one with a Nas.
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Been deploying Synology NAS in my business since 2011. No joke. No more Synology for my company. Its time for the Synology alternatives videos.
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long term synology user, from DS213 erra; ugreen currenlt looking tempting.
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I tried for few min, but I ain’t watching video which could be summed in two words; VENDOR LOCK-IN. PS You are walking on pretty thin line of something useful vs random rambling; would suggest scripting your videos.
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syn-who?
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I am mighty glad that about a year ago I decided to upgrades my old DS1415 to a DS1522+. Hopefully that should see me through a good few years.
Swapped the drives over no problem, added a new 16TB Ironwolf and then swapped out one on the original 6TB drives for another 16TB Ironwolf, no issues at all, my storage pool expanded and no complaints from the NAS, since added a 10GB card and it is operating wonderfully. I have no objection to using Synology branded drives but give me the choicee.
It’s akin to buying a Dell computer then wanting to add a bit more internal storage, oh no Dell have started branding hard drives and you can only use Dell branded drives. Seems such a bizarre way to carry out a business, brilliant way of making people pissed people off though!
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Why? Money.
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I was only considering Synology, but they lost me as a customer. I just bought the Ugreen NAS instead. Delivery tomorrow.
I couldn’t give a s* about their reasoning.
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Actually Synology could be doing their own HHD.
Because Seagate and WD can’t guarantee they will be still making HDDs in 3 to 5 years.
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Synology has really screwed the pooch this time.
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My previous Synology dead years ago, but I learnt that I don’t really need a slow NAS. Synology NAS is slow as hell.
Waited but Synology keep rolling out devices with J4125.
I would have bought one if it is N100, N150, N355.
compatibility lists? No, not for me. I am looking for Toshiba HDD
Just brought a ugreen NAS ytd and it is on the way. I can buy a NAS anytime if the hardware attract me.
Synology? maybe I will take a look five years later, if it still exist in consumer’s market
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I’d rather they let us pay a license fee per port, like extFat license, or the camera license for the DSM to ignore the compatibility requirements for that port at the cost of we forfeiting their support..
Different tier of system at different price
They still do compatibility test for different drives, but holds no responsibility
this way they get the funding for each port, and they don’t have to hoard onto large numbers of their branded old drives, providing support logistics and we get the freedom.. kind of like paying for ransom ????, but I’ll be okay with that
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It’s been a couple of years since we completely switched from Synology to QNAP and all along I can see that I made the right move. Just the fact that with QNAP we taking advantage of the technology and broader software options that Synology is releasing +- 6 years apart is a reasonable enough reason not to implement Synology stuff to our SMB or enterprise customers. Then the icing on the cake is the nonsensical restrictions on their users (H264 and H265/H265+ jamming, that’s really cool when suddenly my IP cameras stop working and lock-in doesn’t even need to be mentioned) – I’m glad we avoided all that ☺
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I have to say, the prices of their HDD are quite aligned with the rest. Sometimes their 16tb HDD are even cheaper than Seagate and WD and in theory there should be less chances those are refurbished disks sold as new (there was a scandal around Seagate disks not long ago).
The story changes quite a lot with SSD. For my 1522+ I got 2 used disks for 45 Euro and it’s perfect, if I have to put Syno SSD I need to keep my child hungry to afford them.
Regarding enterprise drive I think it’s normal that level of pricing: also Dell, HPE and other players have mega prices for their HDD. Regarding the availability I can’t tell
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I thought it’s always just you talking to us ????????????
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Have a DS918+ that I was thinking of upgrading with year. Now I have a 3/4 built NAS with a Board/cpu combo from CWWK, a Silverstone case, and 4 new 10tb Seagate Iron wolf drives. Thanks Synology for the push.
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I guest the answer is royalties , I guess Synology believe they could push WD ou Seagate or Any to share benefit with royalties , just like Apple , if you want to be used on the most largest NAS distributed brand you have to pay. In fact it’s fair because all hard drive manufacturer make money because of NAS , who still using HDD in personal computers ??
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Synology DSM is excellent. The hardware isn’t. For the longest time, the biggest “compatible drive” was 16TB…in 2025, if you want a 20-22TB drive, you have to go Synology Enterprise drives and those are expensive as hell! Why not offer Plus-drives instead in those sizes? Makes no sense…
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I can’t support any view that makes hardware less serviceable, or less accessible (either by excessive price or scarcity). Both these are what Synology has created by their hard drive stance. I was always aware of the better software, but the hardware always came across as so incredibly dated compared to the competition, with very little true innovation. Compared to QNAP for example, that has average software but mostly current hardware platforms. Synology always feels like it’s targeted at iPhone users who will buy a brand “just because” and don’t think about the ecosystem lockin. I think Synology is literally trying to retarget their market away from enthusiasts, thus why they don’t care about the change.
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Great video and as someone with 2x older Synology units that i’m looking to replace i have literally started looking at alternative brands and solutions. When i started looking i looked at synology and there are hardly any units or options available at most local suppliers and certainly no synology drives or parts available. Most of the old stuff that didn’t have restrictions is gone from the marketplace and the new stuff is either low stock or not available especially in anything more than say 2 – 4 bays.
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16:25 – “if you’re going to make your drives the only gig in town.” I see what you did there.
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for me, the damage is done – I can’t trust, nor recommend them for my soho or friends – I’ve talked one friend out of going their direction and actively moving data from my current synology to other solutions so that I’m not artificially penalized and forced into drive selection that, with other solutions, let me almost double my space or raid ADG for less money, same outcome.
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I would have had more respect for Synology if they decided selling their products to Businesses only. What they’ve done is Anti-Consumer, especially that no other NAS providers ever done this. I have purchased 4 Synology NAS products over the years, but I will never touch that brand again even if they reverse this decision. Besides I think that the damage to their brand is already done.
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I have gotten synology for years but now i think a device i can load my own code list CopyParty would be a winner
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I have a DS1821+, 1621+, and 920+. All of them have 14 and 16TB SHUCKED white label WD Red drives in them. Guess what? No warnings and not a single failure since October 2020! I love my Synology’s NAS’, but have to say this Synology drive thing is a grift! I had suspicions when they deliberately excluded my 2TB Samsung NVMe memory from being used as storage preventing me from benefiting by using them for VM’s. Being 5 years now, I figure I’ll get at least another 5 out of them. At that point I’ll have to decide if I have to purchase new NAS’ anyway, will they be Synology or another brand. Who knows, UGreen will be 5 years older and mature. Then again Unifi may be a better option albeit I do wish that had a GUI OS. It’s too bad, this was a self inflicted wound. But, maybe Synology just doesn’t care. Time will tell. JMHO ????????♂️
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Approximately four weeks ago, I was looking to purchase a NAS device. This would be my first one, as I had previously only used DAS systems. Synology was my initial preference, but after conducting some research, I chose QNAP instead due to Synology’s limitations on compatible drives. I did not want to modify the system to make it work with my existing hard drives.
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Chapters are great, love them, and wish every channel & video had them.????
BUT people need to hear the reasons as warnings! ????
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You went to Taiwan earlier this year. I hope the Synology people did not cause you any problems because of all those lovely videos you give to us.
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My $0.02 worth – Synology will introduce certain “classes” of HDDs from select OEMs. Syn already has the data about which drives work ‘best’ but best is in quotes here because the OEMs who make the Syno short list will have negotiated a monetary ‘sharing’ arrangement with Syno.
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TLDR: Synology is dead
Long live the king.
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Just purchased a Ugreen NAS a month ago after planning on a Synology for like a year. It’s my first Nas, but I’m not computer illiterate. Bewn building my own PC’s since my 20’s……I’m 44. Synology’s move to limit HD to only their brand pushed me away as a consumer. Was a dumb move.
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Really enjoyed the content. Don’t have much that hasn’t been said.
I didnt recently upgrade from a 920+ to a 1823xs+ and used WD DC550’s. I got warnings but silenced them. The 1823xs will last me a while. May, however be my last.
DSM was the deciding factor for me. Feel the competition may catch up software wise in the future. Then things really get interesting.
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If I just pull my backup from a DS1817 (8 x 16TB Exo) can you confirm please that they wont auto detect and work in a DS1825+.
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This is the best overall nas overview. Love the content!
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I think this is an important video to have everyone access. Those with little experience or prior knowledge will not appreciate the limitations they may get themselves into if deciding to buy a Synology nas rather than an alternative. Those in the know already know.
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A pure play NAS business is unsustainable in the long term as there is a limited Addressable Market and the refresh cycle is long for NAS devices – outside of techies and hobbyists, people who buy and install Synology NASs will leave them running for years and either upgrade to larger units or add more to the installed base. You would have to look at the history of Network Appliances (NetApp) and EMC. The big difference is Synology started from the consumer market and seems to be trying to graduate into the Enterprise market (EMC, NetApp) where revenue is steady and they can diversify into maintenance and Data Management. Basically they are quietly leaving the “consumer” and “prosumer” markets behind since the barrier to entry is so low. When is the last time we talked about Buffalo or Netgear NASs? People who will buy into the walled-garden Synology will not be the type to nickle-and-dime the price of components because they will pay for stability and support. InstaPot went out of business because everyone who wants one has one and the products will outlast the lifetimes of the owners.
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no more microsoft, no more synology
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I need the largest drives possible which immediately eliminates synology for me. I will likely maintain a small 2 bay unit to run the software bits that I need but my company will be switching over to Qnap when our current synology’s go out of support.
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As a DS-920+ owner, I’m NOT going to buy another of their products. UGREEN, Teramaster, lots of others available.
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Yes, Synology have mad a rod for their own back IF they ever intend to approve other brands’ hard drives.
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I’m starting my migration off Synology this weekend. It was fun while it lasted, but I won’t support this company even if a hack is available..
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It should be noted that the largest plus series Synology drive is 16TB and the delivery date for me is currently over a month out. I can buy a 22TB WD or Seagate for just slightly more and have it delivered overnight. Sorry Synology. Your drives can’t be that superior. Let the user decide if they want the extra stability offered by your drives or are willing to risk it with other vendors. I currently have over 600 WD and Seagate drives installed in Synology hardware. Been running some of them for as much as 15 years and I have NEVER lost a RAID.
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I just bought a DS223J. The ONLY reason I bought it was because it can still use anyone’s drives and also it was on sale because clearly Synology only branded new models are on the way. If UGreen NAS had been available already for sale her in Oz I would have gone with UGreen but they aren’t retailing here yet. My next NAS will DEFINITELY not be a Synology unless they back down over the use of their drives in the new hardware models and at the time are competitive against a (by then) well-matured UGreen O/S.
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When are you going to invite a Synolgy spokesperson onto your channel for an interview to explain their position and for you to put all of the criticisms to them to ensure they are actively listening ??? Time for something other than just the same talking head waxing lyrical – let’s go to the source. And if they refuse to be interviewed – tell them you will be reporting that too !
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after 15 years of using various Synology NAS, they lost me due to this policy, and in a recent upgrade I switched to QNAP. I didn’t choose DIY because compact size and energy efficiency are my priorities
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I am sure Microsoft would love to be able to dictate what ram, cpu, hard drives, gpu and cooler you can have in your PC (purchased only from their preferred partners of course) to make PC’s running their O/S safer and more reliable too…
Clearly Synology thought – “We have the Market Share – if we enforce our expensive drives we are going to make extra money. Don’t worry about the Users – they’ll just grumble for a while then accept it and still keep buying our NAS systems.” This reminds me of Sony demanding you use their memory modules etc back in the day. And do Sony still do this today ? I don’t think so. They realised it was a mistake. And how often do you see people insist on “Sony only” for quality and reliability nowdays as used to be the case ? Sony are just another player in a big pond.
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I really hope they U-Turn. Perhaps they could lower the price of their proprietary HDDs as a pseudo-backtrack before allowing the rest to be natively compatible. A full U-turn, in Synology’s eyes, is a full-on admittance to a mistake and they’ve been historically too prideful to admit any due to maintaining their “Brand”.
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Synology is at their peak, yes.
But they are also on borrow time, too many Chinese NAS brands on the rise, commercial grade market is getting crowded, Synology wants an easier and more profitable market: enterprise grade.
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Replacing the software on my Synology NAS will be tricky, but their hardware offerings are subpar and too restrictive. They are out of the running for my next NAS.
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Great video. Ds1522+ is likely going to be my last Synology purchase unless they roll this back. Having said that I see the commerical / financial perspective at play here, though I disagree w the strategy. Which sees to shift from the DIYers to a more mainstream plug n play (Dell/Lenovo).
I would have also hoped they recognized the shift to NVMe and went hard that way. I bought a beelink me mini after watching your (and several others) review and it’s fantastic, virtually silent, power draw is low, sitting next to my DS1522+ as a backup target for critical files (family photos). I need to spend more time learning how TrueNAS works to get other services / docker apps running (maybe in December)????
Assuming Synology survives and keeps their software and apps at current standards, and when my DS1522+ dies, at maximum I will get a 2 bay system from them in the future almost as a gateway for using their apps.
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Hmm. Assuming Synology is a tech company that works similarly to those I’m familiar with in other sectors…
3:12 (compatibility mods): I think it’s important to remember that a tech company isn’t a group of people who all agree with one another. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Synology’s current direction was concocted by some management type who didn’t really understand how customers would feel, while the engineers know a train wreck when they see one. So possibly the idiots doing this don’t understand those scripts and the people in Synology who do could stop the scripts don’t want to.
As for how they backpedal from this? Like you say, it’s going to be difficult. Maybe they U-turn then wait several years for the reputational damage to subside, but the more likely option would be some kind of high-profile regime change to convince people such policies aren’t coming back. So maybe they either need to fire someone senior or even try to get the entire company acquired.
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Can we please get more units like Minisforum N5/N5 Pro units so we can run our own NAS units with open source NAS software and finally put companies like Synology in the rear-view mirror and put it all down to a bad dream
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The value of my Synology nas is is not close to what my hard drives have cost. Changing platforms is not that hard to do.
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Possible Synology Strategy Using the Overton Window:
Unthinkable
Situation: A complete ban on using any third-party drives.
Actions: This measure is introduced quietly, in new models, with minimal mention in marketing materials.
Effect: Power users are outraged, protests appear on forums, but most potential customers are not even aware of the issue.
Radical
Situation: A workaround script appears, allowing any drives to be installed.
Synology’s actions: They pretend “not to notice” the script, giving time for activists to “let off steam.”
Effect: The protest shifts into a “comfort zone” — those who were most outraged have either already bought a device using the script or have lost interest in the conflict.
Acceptable
Situation: After a year or two, Synology updates the firmware, and the script stops working.
Messaging: “We did this for your security and system stability.”
Effect: No massive scandal — protestors are less active, and most device owners choose the “safe” option of switching to branded drives.
Sensible
Situation: Synology offers a “discount” on branded drives during upgrades.
Effect: Users feel the company is making concessions, and see buying Synology drives as a “beneficial choice” rather than a forced measure.
Popular
Situation: The community starts saying: “Synology drives are actually more reliable.”
Effect: Drive lock-in becomes the norm, while third-party options are seen as an exotic choice for “geeks.”
Policy
Situation: Synology officially announces: “Our devices only work with Synology-branded drives.”
Effect: This is perceived as a natural and normal practice.
Key Benefits for Synology
Time — the most valuable resource. While users believe they’ve “won” thanks to the script, the company gains extra device sales.
Market control over spare parts — once the script is blocked, many users will be forced to switch to Synology HDDs.
The habituation effect — the longer the situation drags on, the less resistance there will be when a hard lock is finally introduced.
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It’s like the lame printer companies who have chips in their ink cartridges so they can prevent you from buying cheaper 3rd party inks.
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Synology is inferior to other brands, period.
Just the people who are still using it haven’t discovered it. Build your own or get another brand and you will see. I did that and I’m never moving back to sinuslogy (lol SINUSlogy)
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I did upgrade this year but went with unas pro and backup my old synology to that for mobile photo backup.
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It’s all just bean counting and the bean counters know they can afford to take the hit of lost customers because, as you say, they’ll keep some customers with deep pockets and that will make up for some of the loss.
In business nearly every decision is driven by money. Either Synology think the decision will save money or make money. They certainly won’t have made the decision if it loses them money.
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Long time Syn user. Ist unit one bay 106E and as many as 18 units ending in DS718+. Now we must think. Take care of customers and still you can not forget profits. This I know. Too expensive too much change too fast for a SMB or home user to basically deal with. Since we do not know why as your tube titles…I really think they know. I also think they have to live with what is yet to come. A customer has options today. Of course. My current spin up is UG****. We must know in all ways that risking the concept that wasting a customer is a terrible thing. I bet competitors are watching as well as Syn suppliers that customers use to buy drives memory M.2 etc. You brought up some interesting points. We just do not understand why they seem to shoot themselves in the foot. LIve with it. Good topic Good tube Good job!!!
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I can’t imagine this not hurting their sales massively as well as their image.
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Love these videos, so please keep them public.
Seagate and Toshiba get something from this Synology lock-in. however, perhaps the biggest, WD, ends up with nothing. They must be spitting feathers over Synology’s drive lock-in for its customers, and lock out for them.
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The old studio!!! Love the retro vibes… and realizing i have been following you for years at this point. Thank you for your great content!
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Yup Synology is driving the pro sumers away, for a 2/4 bay NAS the extra hdd cost could be manageable but larger arrays and/or enterprise drives it is game over. I myself purchased an 1621 instead of the planned 1625. What the harddisk manufacturers are concerned I do not know if I share your viewpoint. I would like to see the salesfugures. I think the majority of their hdd sales are for datacenters. I can purchase datacenter hdds cheaper then the prosumer versions, eg a WD Ultrastar costs 20% less than a red pro. Because the numbers are huge for datacenter hdds and for pc/laptop market it all went to ssd. Just my thought that they don’t feel it.
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Meh, Synology clearly doesn’t care about the prosumer anymore and are focusing themselves on trying to get enterprise whales. It’s time to move on from Synology, the grass is much greener on the UGREEN side.
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It’s fine to have drives that you vet for your own products, but to say these are the ONLY drives that will work? That’s just a company that can’t see the forest through the trees. Perhaps it’s because all they CAN see are potential dollar bills blocking their view, and think that people love it when a company forces them into a singular option that costs more money. If they would have made those synology branded drives price comparative with other brands, but also allowed other brands as usual, then things would be fine and no damage to their reputation would have occurred. But there is NO way in H. E. double hockey sticks I would buy or recommend a synology NAS now. I would absolutely research other brands and give my hard earned hard to come by money to a company that embraces, or at least allows choice.
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We as a company have stopped selling these units. We enjoyed installing other drives as they were easy to get. We are not going to run scripts to get things going. Just my 2 cents worth. We are testing Unifi, We would go back if they back track.
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I took my money and went asustor
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This kind of video is extremely useful as people like me have no time to go through Reddit or forums to find out what is going on but as a Synology DS920″ owner and someone who is looking to soon set up a second Nas for a remote backup I’d like to know what is going on on the market. Thank you for the insights. I treated it more as a podcast but that is fine as well.
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So happy that I went with ugreen
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You touched on this aspect before, Robbie. The main reason the HDD lock-in policy has so angered users, is that DSM is so darned good. Those users, and myself, would prefer to remain on DSM, but feel forced to move.
Here’s a positive spin on the HDD lock-in policy. If their drives had a 10% premium, I’d buy them every day and twice on Sunday! I’d spend more to remain on DSM. However, I will not pay over 100% more, that’s just crazy. If a user wants to spend £650 on a Synology HDD when the very HDD its based on cost half that, why would they? Businesses might, but the core customer base for Disk Station products, the home and small business owner, can’t stomach that kind of price difference.
When you see such huge price disparity, it smacks of pure profiteering. Add to that, the extremely long delay from the massive storage companies in verifying their drives. Surely such companies with huge testing resources could verify their drives to Synology’s test criterion very quickly. This begs the question, are they really verifying their drives? Or, as I still maintain, are Synology evaluating the pushback to determine whether they suddenly verify the drives that have been so for years, and allow people to buy their products again.
If they wanted more profit margin, they should’ve considered the hit on sales as a result of their restrictive policy.
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I was considering buying one for my business because of the support, but honestly any company that goes down this road doesn’t get my business. Bought a minisforum and will put unraid or trueNAS on it.
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I simply stop looking at Synology solutions due to this move they made, period, is not user/industry friendly. Furthermore, at the start of the year, when I started looking for an upgrade of my old P.O.S. WD nas, I looked at all current solutions (minus Synology) and after months of looking into it, by far the best solution out there for anyone with a slight knowledge of tech, DIY is the best way to go, the hardware that you can use along with TrueNas Scale is way more powerful than any ready to go solutions. But at the end of the day, you do you and get what you want. This is only my oppinion. Synology shut themselves not in the foot, straight in their guts.
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this policy of theirs will only make sales worst.
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They went for a naked cash grab and destroyed every last drop of consumer good will they had in the process. Sad. I honestly think this could destroy the company.
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Even if they rolled back on this issue . what keeps them from doing it again later down the line ?
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im entry level to NAS after heavy research i go for ugreen , no only for hard drive thing but also can put there truenas instant for ugreen os
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Non member here, Please keep making thse vids public. It is important to discuss these subjects with the wider audience.
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Their “scale up” is garbage and out of touch with a large segment of their user base that used to be loyal. Their scale up has always been as little as possible and call it a new model. Good riddance. They are irrelevant for the newer markets that UGREEN and others are providing much better hardware and value. Even if they dropped the hardware validation garbage their still not a good value. They need to switch to low power H class intel CPUs and vpro.
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Here is my theory… Synology decided they wanted to become the “Apple” of the NAS world. You want to use our software? Right, then you can only use our hardware. Apple can pull this off because they make beautiful products that are status symbols, look beautiful, and people use the whole time. I’m not sure you can “do an Apple” if your product lives in a server closet.
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As I watched the video from the beginning, it reminded me of hacks that were used to install MacOS on unsupported Macs. Sooner or later, there was “Got you!,” and all the data is lost and the system won’t boot. I fear that this hack will sooner or later will brake when you install an update, and then panic will set in..
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Looks like it went public (otherwise I wouldn’t have seen it).
To my while disappointed, my data is too important to risk it on some DIY “Heath Robinson” solution.
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The problem is that people buy dirt-cheap drives on fire-sales. I would NEVER pay full retail for any drive.
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BANG ON about lack of comments, it’s essentially impossible to leave comments on smart tv’s.
On top of this, when you’re in a playlist, there’s no comment field or even thumbs up/down. For example when I click “Watch Later” when browsing my feed to collect up videos to watch while eating (for example), I go to my Watch Later feed and it takes manually pausing a video to get those to appear, but unless I link my phone and have it active in the YT app while watching on TV I can’t vote or comment.
As for the topic at hand, yeah I think DIY’rs and hobbyists have given up on Synology as way overpriced. And “proprietary” drives makes it even worse.
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The biggest concern going forward with Synology, at least from my home/prosumer perspective, is uncertainty with where the product and company is going.
Their competitive advantage is DSM software, yet have continually eroded the non-business feature set update by update, likely due to still running ancient 4.4 linux kernel. They started selling support contracts requiring branded drives, normal for enterprise storage solutions, while saying those restrictions won’t apply elsewhere, until it applied only to rack mount devices and subsequently now all 2025 and future devices. They tell us they want to expand further into the enterprise market yet still sell bottom barrel spec’d 1-2 bay non-plus NAS units businesses don’t buy.
So Synology wants to consolidate the home/prosumer offerings into an enterprise business model, but are they going to provide any better service that enterprise offerings typically command? When their rebranded hard drives fail, will you get same/next-day replacements commensurate with enterprise support? If their hard drive supplier suffers a bad batch of drives, how would they handle it for all their home-enterprise customers? Drop it on the lap of their supplier? Blame the home-enterprise customer for not keeping spare drives that may also potentially be faulty? Should the home-enterprise customer be required to have a second synology device for backup with synology branded, faulty drives as well?
Synology wants their cake while beating the horse that got them to where they are. It’s dead, Jim.
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My first NAS was a two bay Synology. I would have upgraded to a larger one but this policy drove me to my own build and TrueNAS. It was more work but the results have been excellent. I’ll never go back.
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they are going to be less profitable from me. I need more 12 bay units, and won’t be buying any more units from them.
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Greed, there, saved you the whole video. ????♂️
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Somehow I suspect they change to more large business. sell them full package software/hardware and leave entry marker completely. In entry level competition is fierce so put more attention to medium and large business offers, to business that will buy hardware software and support subscriptions. and leverage they brand name. In business clients
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I’m very new to the NAS game, Synology was my way to go………until I heard they all will only work with there own drives (I know better now of course) but that “rumor” put me right off and I went QNAP.
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I don’t get it. If you like/need what Synology has to offer then buy them, if not, buy from the competition.
What’s the big deal? HDD compatibility has been an issue for some years now. I’d rather have their branded drives that I know will work than some random drive that I have to take a chance on.
I’ve zero interest in tinkering and I just upgraded one of my 4-bays with Synology plus drives to be able to migrate them when I upgrade my NAS hardware in a year or so.
I also have no interest in changing to another manufacturer because Synology does everything I want it to d, if it didn’t I would just buy something else.
Also the plus drives are very competitively priced I think and as far as I can see they are Toshibas so they should be good as far as quality goes.
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I’m one of those guys who hardly ever comment.
I’ve got an old 418. But things changed and it was time to expand. Behind it was a 1xx for the backups. I wanted a new nas and move the 418 as a backup. Was interested in a 5 bay as a main. Money was a bit short so I started to save up. The rumours of new nas-systems came alive and all of a sudden there was the leaked specs. 2.5gb standard was a very interesting thing. Didn’t like the hard drive compatibility.
I sucked it up and deceived to stay with Synology because of their dsm. The price of the plus series wasn’t that much higher. Deceided to go with the ds1525+ with 3 Synology drives. It does everything I want and it is a big improvement. The 418 is my new backup-solution (yes, I also have an offsite solution)
My standing on this. 3rd-party would be nice, as not a must. The plus series are to small. If I replace my 418 I can’t do that with a 2bay solution. Because of the limitations of the plus-series at 16tb I need a 4 drive. And that will be a lot more expensive. It’s going to look like my 1525 will be the last Synology if they stay with this roadmap of their own drives.
Yes, I would wave support with non-Synology drives but I’m not willing to pay those gigantic amounts for disks over 16tb from Synology themselves.
I agree with everyone that they made a bad choice. It will hurt them in sales. They have to come up with a solution quick or they will be the dinosaur in the market, they shoot themself in their feet.
I do like your channel, keep up the good work.
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I bought the first synology in 2012 and had 6-7 different models over the years, mostly 5 and 8 bays. Was waiting for the 2025 +models to make the next upgrade. However since the hdd issue hasn’t changed yet I’m very close to buy a 8 bay ugreen… it seems their apps are pretty good now.
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Great new format. I wan’t MORE!!
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I’ve lost ALL TRUST in Synology. They haven’t given us any decent hardware in years, they’ve been removing software features over the last few years, and now they’ve locked down their systems.
I see absolutely no reason to choose them over their competition. I can buy a UGreen device (I won’t, no Chinese hardware in my network, hard pass) and drop TrueNAS on it, I can just build my own NAS altogether and put TrueNAS or Unraid on it, I can get a Ubiquiti UNAS pro and a mini-pc to have far more flexibility and performance, etc. And I can do all of that for a fraction of the price even BEFORE I take into account their incredibly overpriced drives.
It was a good run, but I’m moving on for good now. I hope their profit margins reflect their terrible decisions.
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5 stars for more content like this
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Hi there this was great video and i fully agree with you. I my eyes Synology chosen wrong path. My next NAS will not be Synology. In last 3 years they made several bad decisions and i do not trust them. I love Seagate hdd and i want to use them in my next NAS. You name it TrueNAS or QNAP are good choice. DMS was easy to setup especially to you.????. We familiarly call you the guy with gold digiwatch who quite often talks to seagals.
But when you learn ubuntu, proxmox, docker and other apps why would you bother to buy overpriced HW without be able to use Seagate hdd with less stuff on DMS then three years ago. E.g limitations of cameras and h.264 or h.265 codecs. Once again thanks for the video and for your role in the NAS community.
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I may be rare, but I almost never use any type of tech support on anything. I am a huge tech guy that runs a business with lots of technology, and I always just figure it out myself or replace parts.
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I have a DS214se that I noticed recently doing some large transfers (~100GB) will not connect at the speed of my network (1Gbps), only 100Mbps, so getting only 11MB/s transfer speeds (ugh). Looking around at the new models for a quick replacement I stumbled across this issue. Other relatively recent models are hard to find and just about as pricey as the new ones. Ended up going for a TerraMaster F2-424 which I scored for ~US$275, has way better specs than the options I was looking at for the similar price of what I paid for the TM (not to mention my 214se), should work with my existing WD Reds (and also NVME drives!), and could give me a modest bump in perf when I upgrade my switches to 2.5G soonish.
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I like this format for going deep on such issues. I also had noticed how easy it would be for synology to interfere with the script “hack” and noted that they had not (I use a 1522+ with WD Reds). I’d never heard anyone pay attention to that glaring fact before.
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“Why would I buy that when…” the company can restrict what I can do with the device I paid for?
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Biggest question for Synology: is their software good enough to stand on its own against separately available software like truenas and the likes?
Their hardware looks nice, but on the inside it is basically standard pc architecture.
If they have balls and are convinced of the quality of their products they should sell their hardware and software as separate products and compete on merits.
Going for a closed ecosystem looks nice if you are at the top of the foodchain like apple, but I don’t think most buyers in this age are willing to commit themselves to proprietary products.
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I’ve said before, I’m fine if they back the requirements to a warning instead, if/when you use a drive that is not on their list. The way it does today. I’m not fine with losing the warranty, but I could understand that they restrict it to their hardware.
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They will either back out or ask for a subscription or licence cost to unlock the feature. For me as a home user I won’t be buying them anymore like many others I’ll just build it or get another Qnap Ugreen etc be good to see if it hits their revenue figures and Qnaps grows
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RIP Synology, they shot themselves with that decision
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???? What a shame that you need 22 minutes to explain/defend pure greed.
‼ *Since Synology exists, disks have NEVER ever been a problem for performance or stability.*
‼ *The hundreds of millions of Linux servers prove the same thing.*
⚠ That’s why it’s pure greed that drives Synology. That’s why Synology is no longer trustworthy. ⚠
???? *That’s why Synology isn’t worth a penny anymore.* ????
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So with the news of the drives a few months ago and the latest AI news I decided I’ve had enough with synology and want to go for a DIY one, I have no clue what components to buy does anyone have a suggestion? The only thing I could decide on was a fractal node 304
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Synoology is past being able to rely on their hardware alone to drive sales – They’ve been living on their software for quite awhile now. Let’s face it, the upgrade path isn’t that compelling just on hardware specs or capabilities (we still don’t have onboard transcoding support for example), and they have continued the mediocrity into their own media, which either seems out of date or just overpriced. Like many dead companies before them, they decided to create a walled garden rather than innovate. The low-end is not worth it – it’s really crowded and Terramaster (for example, pick your favorite) competes well there. Mid-teir (4 bay) for SMB purposes is probably low margin for them, so applying the “razor blade” principle (not a perfect analogy) in media lock-in is obvious but damaging in the long-term. And while true enterprise class machines are profitable, they just haven’t been able to compete in the world vs. “true” storage solutions which just frankly outperform anything they have ever offered. They’re not NetApp.
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Great video! I never thought about the drive manufacturers. Great insights, please don’t paywall your knowledge.
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If a company wants my positive review they better pay me for my time.
To get my negative review all they need to do is give me shit service.
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Synology is quickly becoming the Nvidia of the NAS market. “We’re big enough to do whatever the F we want. Don’t like it? F off.”
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For enterprise buyers, they are used to buying ‘named’ drives…..IBM for one. I bought units in the past and stuck with their drives.
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When I started researching to buy my first NAS I was leaning toward Synology. I was leaning that way primary due to Synology having a large media presence, they advertised everywhere, and the large numbers of online groups dedicated to them.
What started to push me away from them was the initial rumors that they were heading toward restricting options to their own branded drives. I am a big advocate for right to repair and manufacturers restricting a consumers options to their own branded solutions is a huge red flag to me. To be clear I agree and have no heartache with companies offering their own branded products. But the line is where it becomes the only solution available.
I ended up going with QNAP. Yes, I read the security vulnerability stories and checked the CVEs on them and others. Still I went with them and as my first, and hopefully only ever NAS. I’m comfortable with my choice.
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I actually bought last years model because of the proprietary hard drive of the new ones. I bet the used market will go up also because of this.
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In my opinion because Synology is restricting which hard drive’s I can use I will never purchase a Synology NAS or their hard drive’s because they’re just rebranding some else’s hard drive’s and then jacking up the price because their name is on it which is BS !!!!!!!!!!!! In my opinion Synology NAS’s are NO BETTER than Qnap, Asustor, or any of the other NAS’s on the market to justify the price they ask for their NAS’s and to require we use only their hard drive’s and also their software isn’t that special either !!!!!!
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Active Backup for Business is a Synology killer app for me, especially given that it supports PC and Mac … I don’t think there’s another manufacturer which has an equivalent product which includes deduplication of backups … if my Synology kit was to go pop tomorrow, I’d either fix it or get a used one – with these seemingly ever increasing restrictions they’re gradually killing off the “ease of use” which is what makes them attractive to home/prosumer uses in the first place.
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Something that has hardly been addressed is that a drive is not the same as another drive. I’ve experienced compatibility issues with hard drives and raid controllers. Even when using drives that are on the hardware compatibility list. I worked building, among other things, storage servers. We used raid controllers from Adaptec, LSI, 3Ware and some other that I can’t remember the name of. And when I say storage servers we are talking about 16, 32 or more drives. I think 120 drives was the largest server I built. But we always was checking the HCL for compatible drives, and even then we sometimes ended up with an install where the drives would start failing in the arrays and the solution was to get a new firmware and install it on every drive. In one case WD replaced over 150 drives that was used in a customers servers, which was nice of them. But it took quite a while to physically replace every one. In another case I was updating the drive firmware on all drives on a number of servers using a software packet from Adaptec. It was not something they released to customers usually but we got pretty good support from them after doing a lot of bug testing of new controllers for them.
Having a small number of drives that were guaranteed to actually work with the controllers would have saved us a lot of money.
And these companies only made the RAID controllers, we built the machines and the customers all came to us when things went wrong.
Synology is building the NAS units, so any complaints get sent their way. Drive failures and such make them look bad, especially if the drives are on the HCL. So having their own branded drives that has been thoroughly tested with their units is a good way to cut back on the “stupid” complaints when a drive manufacturers drives start to fail because they updated the firmware to solve some other issue.
Yes a lot of the time the drives failed because they had a newer firmware than the one they had when tested for the HCL list. And backing down the firmware is often not a good reason as they are updated because they have identified some other problem. So you have to contact the manufacturer and hope that they can whip up a further improved firmware that’s also compatible with the storage solution you use.
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I am still torn over Synology’s decision… I don’t like it on principle so I am thankful that my DS1520+ is new enough, and expandable, that I really won’t have to worry about this for many years to come. I will still have Synology on the list to consider in the future as I like the ease of ABB, Photos, and Drive. But if another company has similar bundled offerings when I need to update I would likely switch to them.
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SME Synology users are like Apple users and will stick with them regardless. Constistency is key, regardless of value.
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I think most users will be coming from older Synology systems with a bunch of drives that they want to re-use and get a new NAS box, which is not easy to do. I would just go to a competitor.
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As a 918+ owner, I was waiting for a refresh of the RS1221 series to upgrade and swap in the old drives I’ve retired with SHR to shift from desktop to rackmount. The news has definitely soured my view on Synology as a whole. Not counting the compelling argument that Ubiqiti has now set on the table with my network already tied with them.
This feels like what Cisco did with the old Linksys WRT line, where they totally supported higher NVRAM for around 2 models for the enthusiasts and modders before just throwing everyone under the bus and abandoning the idea. Since then, Linksys has faded from memory for many…
It’s the opposite of Google’s long game to hook school kids on Chrome OS, hoping they keep asking for the same once they start in the workforce.
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Like this style of video. This is a good change of pace with your other videos. I think making it members first and then general public is a good move.
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I just want something that works. I shouldn’t have to put up with this bullshit synology is doing to their former loyal customers. UGREEN here I come.
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There are 9 Plus series desktop models, and 8 rack mount models. That is excessive, very excessive. If money is an issue, they need to pair down their models. If you look at their XS/XS+ line, there are 7 models across desktop AND rack mount. It’s the same for all of their other lines. The plus series is where they try to make a model for everyone that cares. That tells me they probably sell a ton of that series. I can see them trying to squeeze more profit out of the line. What I don’t understand is why they would do that with rebranded drives that someone else makes vs finding ways to make more profit with the NAS itself, which they do make. Profit on a drive has to be pretty thin, even buying them in bulk. I don’t understand why they would not streamline the number of models and look for ways to produce their plus series more efficiently.
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I have a few things to say! …oh, Raid room, not Rage room….sorry.
There can be good reasons for a company to go proprietary in their stack, but normally you want to offer customers a carrot, not just a stick.
If I recall correctly, Synology claimed that the branded setup resulted in fewer customer service calls. If that is objectively true, Synology should have no problem offering extended warranty for a “branded only” system, that would be an example of a value-added service that customers should consider.
Or offer other add-ons, such as purchases of Synology drives would get free or discounted licenses for Surveillance Station.
Or by buying Synology branded disks you get cloud storage or other benefits in their Synology Cloud portfolio.
Sort of still having a walled garden but with an open door inviting people to come on in.
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Yup. I am was to purchase syn (already have), but with hdd saga, went to qnap.
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6:15 – I think this part is key. Someone at synology made a bet and it’s backfiring. I believe HDD lock-in is on borrowed time.
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Don’t know what category, in respect of the general channel population, I fall into but I’ve only purchased a single SYNOLOGY box DS418play.
As a “dip my toes in”, it’s been fine a general backups box but it’s clear now that I really need (now, not then) something that can run more CONTAINER based utilities.
I can’t see myself buying another Synology box!
So, is the change aimed at directing purchases away from people like me, more to office usage, or corporate? If so, then smaller boxes are unlikely to be made surely? Also why the price markup for larger drives?
It all seems _higgle-de-piggledy_ to me! But, as I say, I don’t think that I’m their target market any longer. Wish I’d not invested in it now is how I’m feeling.
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There should be NO members only videos!!!! We don’t want yet another subscription or fee!!!!
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Not a member – but watched entire video with interest
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My 713+ just crashed two disks divided over 2 separate volumes over span of a week (first since 11 years). One with I/O errors and another with bad sector spam. This would have been the moment I bought a 25+, but I won’t now. Just popped in two new Exos 7E10 drives and looking at other options.
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Bang on about the Smart TV comment thing, just a barrier that’s more trouble than it’s worth. That’s a shame as it applies to ALL content not just this channel… keep up the good work ????
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Just for the sake of an argument, I’m betting synology is waiting until enough money printing humans uses that script and at the perfect moment suddenly hard-block it and bam, useless NAS, unless those ATMs buying synology proprietary drives. Genius!
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I belong to the (probably smaller) group of people who can live with Synology hard drives. Since I also use my DS1821+ for business, I would like a stable system with well-designed software. Speed is not such a high priority for me. Until now, I have had HGST and WD hard drives in my NAS. However, I have now started buying larger Synology hard drives and using them. The goal is to replace all 8 hard drives with Synology drives. When I want to upgrade to the new DS1825+, I can then use the existing hard drives without any problems. I will then use the old HGST and WD drives in the old 1821+ as a backup.
I don’t need enterprise drives, so the price difference for the Plus series is negligible.
I know that my approach is not mainstream, but I have specific goals for what I want to do with the NAS.
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What are the alternatives? UGreen? Or should i still consider Synology after what they done? 😀
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They burned my trust, am just upgrading my NASes and will be building a NAS myself. Also will recommend my customers to use other NAS brands.
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It’s clear that someone in Synology’s upper management decided a while back to target the large enterprise, and changed the direction for new hardware in the consumer and, newer, enterprise space. Toward that end, they’re now pushing a premium paid support tier.
Interesting set for the RAID Room. Much more to look at then the [bad] hex tiles we usually see behind you. Add a bed and it would look much like my place.
Robbie, in your “30TB Drives are too big” video you compare costs between a big drive and a handful of smaller ones. What I think you left out is the cost of a NAS bay. Seemingly, the price of a plastic tray, SATA/power connector and a few cubic inches of air is generally well above $100. So, adding a handful of small drives adds a handful of $100++ drive bays as well.
Hello to the gulls!
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It’s basically the same damn hardware for the last 6 years. Why all of a sudden are the already approved drives from 2018-2024 models not work in 2025 version. Scummy business and company…
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I went DIY using TrueNAS because of this very topic. Odd enough, I did end up with Synology drives because I scored 4×16 TB SAS drives for $250 but they was just happenstance.
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I’m DIY but would LOVE to see Seagate and other hard disk manufacturers make a deal with Ugreen or Qnap to literally SINK Synology for good when it comes to the none enterprise market. The sales of the NAS25 releases must be horrendous right now for Synology.
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1 word, G R E E D
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Synology is leaving the consumer market. First take out h264/5 such that cheaper third party camera’s don’t work in their nvr. And then mandate branded drives.
Sure business looking for ease of use won’t mind, but home users will.
They aren’t Apple, they don’t have the brand budget to do this.
What will Synology win? Less support questions, more larger system sales.
What will they lose? Home users recommending these things to their boss.
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If Synology aren’t watching you, they’re terminally stupid. I would only buy a Synology NAS if I was very unknowledgeable, was happy with old/slow disks and didn’t really think about what would happen if I needed a replacement sharpish. Their larger (enterprise) disks are ridiculously priced. Just make them SATA (and SAS) compatible. It’s a standard for a reason. I wouldn’t be surprised if next time around you can only network it with Synology branded Cat 6 cables.
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It’s too late. I’ve been building nas systems since 30 years ago. Six years ago I moved to Synology to hopefully reduce maintenance time. I had eight Synology’s, now I have two. Their days are numbered as I build their replacements. No more vendor nonsense. I do like my 10 bay asustor. I’ll be keeping that.
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After careful consideration over the last few months I am in the camp of “I don’t like what Synology are doing, but I see the value in the marriage of the Synology software and hardware functioning together as one entity with proper vendor support”.
Sure I can host Immich, Plex, Pihole, other open source apps etc etc etc etc in a Docker container on another system, but I have been bitten before where an automated update on the container fails, or the vendor releases a major update that requires the container to be updated/reconfigured manually, not confident what I’m doing/trying to follow ambigous instructions on a forum written by some script kiddie and break the container. If I’m not confident or familiar with the process of troubleshooting and fixing Docker containers using command line, now I have inaccessible data in a broken container.
For my critical data that I want to be available to me for the next 50+ years, I want it stored somewhere where if there is a problem I can go to Synology and say “This is your software, running natively on your hardware, please fix it.”
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Ummmmmmm it’s like every video you’re just talking to us
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I use 8TB Samsung SSDs in my 1821+. I can find zero Synology SSDs available for sale in Germany.
They STILL have not got even 2.5GbE as standard. You need an add in card for 10GbE.
I like the unit. Has worked flawlessly. I like Samsung SSDs + M.2. cards. My choice.
Now I am stuck on DSM 7.1 because they droped VideoStaion in 7.2 onwards. WTF.
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About 75% from Seagate’s revenue comes from datacenters, about 25% from client. Given that I don’t think they are impacted in a significant way by Synology.
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Synology started losing me when they:
1. Released 7.2 and removed their media player and HEVC support
2. Their recent models (eg DS425+) was NOT an upgrade for those home consumers who run plex for themselves
3. [Nail in coffin] the hard drive issue
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Synology will lose me as a customer if they continue this route. I have an old DS220j (2 bay) and an DS918+ (4 bay). One of my future home lab projects is to consolidate these two into a single 8 bay NAS (was looking at Synology DS1825+). Now with this development, I’m thinking of getting a UGREEN NAS and installing TrueNAS on it.
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I wouldn’t be as upset with the demand to use their drives if the were competitive.
18TB Synology $650
18TB UltraStor $230 from Amazon
Synology Drives are nearly 3 TIMES the cost
(cue Darth Vader music) I am altering the deal. Pray it is not altered any further
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Let’s say WD, Toshiba, and the like have to make an effort to get on the compatibility list. But they actually have no interest in participating in this shit and simply say no thanks.
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Sooner or later Synology own hard disks will have a bad batch and then you can’t get a replacement drive for your failing NAS
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I am aggressively looking for a 4 or 5 drive system to replace my plans to buy the 925+ – I already took the 925+ off my wish list at Amazon.
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I had less of an issue with their policy change after I checked the Plus series pricing. There are advantages to getting fully integrated and supported hardware from the same manufacturer, but the Enterprise drive pricing is/was just too prohibitive.
I think you should call this segment “RAID Rant”. ????
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It’s a bit of mixed bag. Synology had even with the old 18 series had a big difference between official ram size support and what users reporting to work. I where looking to buy a bigger and newer Synology but I keep my 718p going and have went with a Terramaster f6-424 max that goes with standard memory, nvme drives and harddrives. I’m free to install whatever I can figure out to install. I think Synology might change their business modell if they see to many customers backing away and go for alternatives.
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I will never buy a NAS, I do DIY, but I care, and I like to see more videos like this one.
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For me, I’ll likely keep a smaller Synology box around for some basic backup stuff. But I’ll no longer have a larger 4 or 5+drive Synology. For the heavier lifting stuff I’ll setup some other server solution from now on. In the end, this means I’ll be spending LESS On Synology than before.
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Great video! You mentioned unifi Nas, and it would be great to see an update on that, every few months.
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…. Truenas exists and if like me, you didn’t know, you can expand VDEV’s now. BYEEEEEEEEEE
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Like the video. Initially I thought the idea was that they would lock the drives to their own firmware so that down the road they could offer better support to their customers. Yesterday I just got an email from Synology offering “Premium Support”!! (no pricing yet)
They are a company that are trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of everyone, I can’t see it work, they are just driving people away. I still trust their software but I’m starting to look to other vendors (except for qnap, got burnt too many times).
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Previously: a high-quality disk station with multiple HDD bays and an expansion unit. Now: a small, inexpensive one just for DSM, plus a TrueNAS server with multiple HDDs for storage.
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I nearly purchased a basic synology nas for simple cloud storage to replace my onedrive. I chose not to and went with another makers product it does the job but it runs the two 1tb drives I already had. Am I happy yes, would I have prefered a nice synology nas to run DSM which seems to be very good Yes. But my Nas works does the basic job and can store my photos. Im a basic user but my brain still cant get past a maker who stops you upgrading with drives you already own which lets face it should run in every system as they 1tb drives I had ran fine in three difference PCs I had.
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Really good video, imo. From a DIY’er perspective this is horrible that they are limiting drives. I have 4 Synology NAS devices running, 1 retired, 2 at home, 1 at work. From a Synology trying to capture the SOHO, and mid biz segments, it makes sense. Fewer configs to test/validate, provide small/mid office a true turn key solution, and you can sell support.
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Same with the Synology security cameras, they need to add more models with additional features (PTZ, optical zoom, color night vision, Wi-Fi, LPR, etc).
Synology HDDs needs to keep up with the capacity available if they won’t allow 3rd party drives.
Or add 3rd party support back!
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i cant afford and will not buy proprietary drives. I try to purchase the best deal per mb cost for size. I like synologys shr format but thats it. i wish synology would back pedal on their own drives. I think its a money grab as once you buy the nas you dont buy anything else from them and it last for years. I have one of their nas thats ten years old. It still just works and im happy with it. But I wont buy another that uses their own drives.
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If you have drives on the compatibility list then you get free tech support. If you have Drives on the non compatibility list its a small but fair fee for tech support. If you mod the synology, no support. I would be ok with that, but you will never convince me my enterprise drives are not going to be compatible when they have been stable as hell for 4 years. I run a business off my Synology and I went with Synology for the simplicity of the apps, the ones we use, mainly Drive just work. I know I am paying to much for the outdated hardware in the box, but if mine fails I can buy another one, move the drives and be back up and running in 48 hours or less. Well now that is not possible and so I am already working on a alternative, because I do not like this approach. Once I find a solid alternative for Synology Drive, I will move that way.
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The #1 reason why I don’t comment, is that usually it’s a waste of time. I can spend time sharing my thoughts, but what’s the point if they will never be read?
Many creators claim they read all comments, but in my experience it’s rarely the case. It may happen when there are only a handful of comments under a video, but with hundreds of comments, or under a video which is more than a few days old, chances that *anybody* will ever see what I wrote are abysmal.
I understand, engagement is important for for creators, but it goes the other way as well. Instead of spending my time on bumping the counter from 12345 to 12346, I’ll rather so something more productive, like watching another video.
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Currently using a Synology DS920+. My use case is primarily backups, archival storage, and large file transfers (4tb+). Its taking 9 to 10 hours for some of the file transfers I need to do on a regular basis, and that is causing a serious loss of productivity for me. I was considering moving to the 925+ but that is off the table for me now. I will likely move to a m.2 NAS such as the TerraMaster F8 – its a beastly expensive solution, but I really need to prioritize speed over cost. Really disappointed in Synology, I like their OS and it has served me well for many years – they have just failed to keep up IMHO.
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Interesting video… It makes no sense to have to patch a new system (and loose support) just to be able to use hdd’s that are probably 99,999% the same as the synology hdd’s. As you mention they are not only more expensive but also quite difficult to find. Anyway, they lost me when they removed the excellent DS vidéo package. If you are pushed to go to Plex to get some stable and decent video platform, you are also pushed to any simple other NAS that supports Plex as good as Synology for a fraction of the price.
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I’m fine with the rambly videos.
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The only way Synology will change if people stop buying them. Loss of sales almost always changes company practices.
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instead of a new Synology I went the DIY way, more power, storage and flexibility for the same amount of money
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In today’s environment – further closing your system is not going to work for almost any company in this realm.
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I don’t care that Synology devices require Synology drive. I appreciate stability. My DS920+ was very slow with 4 WD disks that were not on compatibility list. Once I replaced just two of them with WD disks from the compatibility list, it’s like a switch has been flipped. The NAS is very fast!
I bought a sa6400 for work with 12 Synology drives. It works ok. Software is not up to snuff though. Backup for Mac is terrible. The manual routing table is ignored after reboot and I have to fiddle with it, etc.
I would probably avoid Synology because their offering feels stale and they don’t rise to their promises
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I enjoyed your RAID Rage Room discussion. The issue for me, as I do a vaguely similar job (but not as detailed) to you, is that I have a super-hard time recommending a brand that throws parts of its user-base under the bus, almost without comment. Yes, I can see that Synology doesn’t make a huge amount from the one and two-bay NAS, but surely they’re there to create a brand loyalty that then takes people to the next level? No first step leads to no second step; it ultimately damages high-end sales because someone didn’t start the journey to that hardware. Sales numbers must be telling a story that few in the company can ignore, but instead of communicating how the drive compatibility issue is a temporary glitch, the company is doubling down. Next move, I assume, is to contact all their previous customers who never bought Synology-branded drives and tell them how wrong they’ve been. Synology has a few months left to fix this to the satisfaction of its user base, or there will be no way back, ever.
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Synolgoy lost me as a customer when my first NAS (DS920+) didn’t officially support NVMe storage pools.
I never would have bought it if i knew this was the direction they would be headed at this point.
I just got my second system. Its the BeeLink Mini ME 3 and I think its perfect for my current needs!
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I was going to replace my DS918+ with a DS925+. But the thing that Synology did halted my purchase… I now might go with a DS923+ or just wait and see how UGreen is evolving. Even though a DS925+ with 4x16TB Synogogy drives is not a lot more expensive than with 16TB drives of WD/Seagate/Toshiba, I don’t like the uninclusiveness of their decision….
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They can’t fix this any more in my opinion, they have lost all my business since even if they walk this back there is no guarantee they won’t try it again in one or two years. They have made it clear to me that they are an untrustworthy company. Btw, I have no issues with them having their own drives, nor do I have an issue with them forcing those drives on companies that have an agreement with them on their hardware, but forcing it on regular consumers is beyond dumb. They know how many of those customers they had, the greed just got the better of them.
I just installed my Aoostar WTR Max a couple of weeks ago, which I put some SSDs in and got a Terramaster F8 for my parents to finally swap out their ancient Synology 712+. I still have 2 Synologies running here (1819+ and 1520+) that I will keep for the foreseeable future (one is my main storage and one as backup), but there will never be an other Synology NAS in my house end of story.
I really don’t understand why they didn’t just got out of the consumer market instead, just remove all the plus and non-plus devices from your catalogue and be done with it. It is a really bad time when a company tries to be Apple, one of those arrogant companies is too many as is.
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Will take more than 100 days, More like 6 months for them to verify 3rd party drives, So end of year if nothing by then than forget the brand.
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Given the EUs penchant for bullying Apple and Google for their stores, I’m shocked they allow Synology to do any of this BS.
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Does anyone know of a 1U NAS that does hardware transcoding for PLEX?
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I needed to replace my DS412+ filled with 4x16tb WD red pro drives. I had a long hard look at the UGreen options and was vey close to buying one when I saw a DS423+ on sale and plopped for that. It buys me time to see if UGreen reach their full potential and if Synology continue with their madness. I suspect my next NAS will be a UGreen as Synology have stopped listening to their customers, an act of arrogance that is likely to precede their decline in the market segment I occupy.
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DIY all the way baby ????
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Synology who?
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My latest theory is that this measure isn’t aimed at consumers but at HDD manufacturers. The fact that Synology plans to certify drives of other manufacturers could be read that way. That certification won’t be free and Synology has some leverage because NAS is a place where HDD’s still rule. Easy money for Synology. They probably didn’t count on the backlash from consumers though.
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⚠1. I will never buy a new Synology NAS with hard drive restrictions.
2. I am currently giving all Synology models with hard drive restrictions negative reviews on Amazon and adding a warning. You should do the same!
3. I only use Toshiba hard drives now. In my opinion, they are the best and most affordable.
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You can keep these videos public. I quite like these tech insights / debates / theories / …
About the topic of Synology: I waved them goodbye when about 5 years ago they still didn’t have multigig ethernet in their affordable consumer range. After 3 models of Synology in previous years I then switched to a 2.5Gbe QNAP. And have had a very good experience with it. Now with the hard drive story they surely aren’t going to win me back.
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I always say, if something in business doesn’t make sense, it’s because it involves money.
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OK enough of the pearl clutching and crystal ball gazing. Plus and Enterprise series are intended for business use. In order to provide an SLA as a provider, as you must if you are providing service management in that environment then using branded hardware is essential. For example, try using anything other than Cisco spares in your Cisco equipment and see how far you get with a service call or RMA. From ’25, Synology now making a statement about operating in the same space.
Its absolutely normal behaviour in enterprise service management, end of discussion, period. If gear goes bad, lets say a drive fails while the equipment is under a service agreement, log a case, RMA the drive and a new one appears as if by magic. Try it with other branded disks, you are going to be out of luck with your service request. Perfectly reasonable.
As for the price of enterprise hard drives and especially enterprise SSD, check against other enterprise equipment providers. These drives are completely different to regular drives and they are all priced according. From the internet: Cisco 200GB 2.5 SATA Enterprise performance SSD. aud $4,400.00. Yep, that’s the price for a 200GB Cisco drive. Riverbed 240 GB Solid State Drive. usd $3,388.00/aud$5,215.80. Synology SAT5210 7TB 2.5″ SATA Enterprise SSD aud $3000.00-ish. So lets have some perspective about how the Synology branded enterprise drives are “expensive”. In enterprise land they represent solid value compared to competitors.
If you are a labbist and you want to tinker and use old drives you’ve dragged out from under the bed and especially if you want to use another NAS OS, go buy UGreen. The Ugreen DXP4800 Plus looks like the hobbyists friend as it happens. Fast, flexible, easy to run another OS, doesn’t care what drives it runs, relatively inexpensive, does both 2.5 and 10 GbE. It’s not been around long enough to establish itself as something you could trust your data with long term however.
But if you just need something that’s going to work reliably at managing your files and backups without hassle, Synology. And if you want business or enterprise grade hardware, just buy the Synology drives and move on.
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For my business i just bought a 423+ on sale, not the 425+ to replace a 213+ because of the insecure hdd upgradebility so ill have no headache for the next 10 years.
At home i switched to a terramaster F6, way cheaper and paired with Unraid so much more versatile. Ill probably never going Synology again
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I like these nerdy in depths talks/ramblings. Please make them public. I had a question and wrote a novel. scrolled down before posting and so the “read this before you comment” and my question was answered LOL!
Please keep cooking this sort of material. I love it. And i would love a more in depth video about nas companys way into datacenter/enterprise world. Comparing different brands. if they have made an impact compare to datacenters diy solutions or supermicro machines.
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I have a ds218 and was looking to upgrade to a 4 bay. After this change with synology, I decided to go with Ugreen and picked up a 4300 plus at the black friday sale. Mostly so I could use the inexpensive Seagate 24 TB drives.
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Hard drive manufacturers: Gonna disagree with your take on this one. DIY folks will still have to buy hard drives no matter what direction they go so I don’t see a hit on their sales.
Synology “could” say: “Look, validating 3rd party drives is taking longer than expected so we’re going to allow these drives (then list of 3rd party drives popular with their customer base) – with possibly reduced warranty coverage.”.
But I do agree they have burned some bridges – about the only thing that may get trust back is to publicly cane the executive that came up with the idea then roll back this idea.
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hot take- they could step back from this in one simple way: offer additional benefits by using their “approved” drives instead of blocking usage of other drives. IE: extra warranty if you use their drives, or 1:1 cloud backup capacity of their approved drive etc. also, loved this content, keep the raid room around, this episode was great.
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i was going to get a SYNOLOGY nas but now , am not , iam going to get a ugreen nas …. thanks…
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I’m using a lot of synology NAS for backup solutions. ActiveBackup for Business/M365 etc is just still very attractive. QNAP Software is so much worse in comparison. Personally i wouldn’t buy either…
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Love synology for it’s software ecosystem. However, at this point, I wish they would just sell me a software license and let me use my own hardware…whatever I want and forgo support.
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Greed.
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I kind of have a different view point to what you are discussing at 9min in re: types of users this upsets. It’s not just the entry level or non tech or home lab crowd being screwed over.
The great thing about synology as a sys admin for a company was it was super easy so it was one less thing to think about. Cost was not a major issue as the price of the combined system + disks wasn’t obscene compared to self built. But now due to the larger capacity enterprise disks being mad expensive they have pissed people like me off. People who do know how to use truenas and therefore know the convenience doesn’t outweigh the extra cost anymore so they have shot themselves in the foot. Just 1 project at work I was speccing during this change lost them like 18k euro… I hope others vote with their (companies) wallets and this backfires!
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another syn*logy video? why not talk about e.g. truenas (interesting changes lately) or other solutions?
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I’m looking to replace an aging Dlink share centre and security camera system and gain movie & music streaming, photo back up etc. Whilst I’m 57 and been involved with PCs and networks one way or another since the late 80’s I am trying to soak up as much information as I can. I play YouTube in the background so ‘ramble on’ its all Gryst to the mill. Tell the odd long joke or two, its fine by me.
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It’s been mentioned in the comments for other videos, but worth mentioning here as well. Speaking as a home user who needs storage for backups, media, and whatever else, Synology is (was) a go-to brand. But as an enterprise IT executive, I would not entertain the possibility of using Synology as an enterprise solution. Most of our services are in the cloud. Anything on-prem would use a more established solution/vendor. From my perspective, Synology doesn’t know who they are as a company, and isn’t making rational choices around its business and customer base. They’ll change their tune when the experience enough loss because caused by their poor decisions.
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Great video! I like your perspective. I hope Synology is watching and takes your advice.
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First, i really enjoy this form of content!
Second, my first NAS was a DS220+ and it will be the only Synology device. More because of their hardware choices but strengthened by this move on drives.
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Excellent presentation. Thank you. These series is great. Looking forward to an exciting year for UniFi.
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At this point, I’ll be upgrading in the future to a DIY NAS, plenty of great cases/boards out there as on your channel. May go that route for my future upgrades. Bye bye Synology, was nice for a first time NAS user, but moving on now as your policy on drives is so bad. Same reasons I don’t have apple products either.
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..already moved on.. why keep talking about it ? They made their mind up
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Feels good to have moved away from Synology to an old 4 bay Dell Optiplex with ZimaOS wich is upgradable, repairable and is cheap AF. Cheers Synology keep doing your stuff!
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I used to love Synology, and I own 3 of their NAS but after they changed (and only supported 1Gb Ethernet when everyone else had 2.5Gb), I gave up on them for their competition. And I have no intention of going back.
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Where the heck is QNAP? They should be agressively pushing for marketshare!
I have a 2bay Qnap next to my 3 Synology systems. The Qnap is great! The only reason i have more synology systems is purely because all how-to’s online are skewed towards synology/DSM.
If Qnap steals marketshare the content creators will follow, because again, the make great hardware.
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Synology should just smarten up and charge $5 for non qual hardware per month and defer support requests. Go saas. The os provide a bit of value now until the chinesium copy it.
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At this point, it is reasonable to assume that Synology will either *back out* of the drive restriction or *double down* on it. If they double down, they will likely also prevent circumvention hacks at some point. I think it is rather naive to assume that they will just allow/ignore the hacks – they might have in the past, but that was _before_ their much broader rollout that we’re facing now.
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they piss off the core audience to appease the “modern audiences” the old ones are gone and there is no “modern audience” same recipe that broke hollywood….. in 3 years synology will be a wikipedia entry only, failure well earned….
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I would suggest that there are some fundamental weaknesses in your profitability argument. I’ve been an accountant going on 40 years now although not in a manufacturing environment. 1) For starters, the vast bulk of development costs are sunk costs; ie, they were paid out a long time ago. Once that money has been spent, there’s no way to recover it. You have to hope that your future sales will be sufficient to recover them. So, going forward, the only costs that matter are manufacturing and distribution. Without including the amortizing of those dev costs, they likely make a rather decent profit. 2) Next up is the spreading of dev costs over many models, plus models and otherwise. Sometimes companies will develop a product knowing that the profit margins will be slim to nil ; they do this so knowing that at least some of the dev costs will be absorbed by those less than profitable models. It’s not always the best strategy but, when the dev costs are able to be spread over a far greater number of models, then the overall profitability rises. There are lots of other accounting thoughts that come to mind but I think that sort of makes the point. Accounting is both art and science, or so we were taught and it’s not as black and white as we might think sometimes. Now, about that 8 x 30 Tb NAS in my guest room and those related costs…
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Good video. I don’t see Synology adding any 3rd-party drives to the 2025 NAS compatibility lists…
…because they haven’t added any drives to the 2023 NAS compatibility lists! (At least not the one I have.)
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They drop of the Homeuser market is what makes me angry towards Synology. I loved DS Video… now I have to use Jellyfin.
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Honestly this whole situation just annoys me and has me highly considering getting a 923 for the flexibility the 925 lacks. But what’s worse is I was just beginning to invest in their eco system a few years ago to end up here
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I had a self build NAS solution and the only reason that I bought Synology was for userfiriendlyness and the app ecosystem. I think that the userfriendlyness can be far better and also the app ecosystem is bad, since the have replaced some apps from others and also the number of updates and improvements is bad in my opinion.
Therefore I think that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
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I hope this bankrupts Synolog so they get sold in pieces.
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Un-popular opinion: For my work, I just purchased 2 – RS2423+ loaded with 16TB synology drives. This will provide primary backup for 40 servers for the next 5 years. The increase in cost for verified drives over 5 years is minimal. For my home, when my 2 bay synology’s die, I’ll be adding disks to my Truenas build.
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I’m sorry to say that for me at least Synology seems to have peaked at the 920+. The only reason I wouldn’t switch is simply the hassle of switching; but I think I’m willing to go through with it when I feel my NAS is no longer able to perform the tasks I need it to perform. FYI, I think I would consider myself a novice user.
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I’d be amazed if Synology hadn’t already had those discussions with, at the very least Seagate regarding the Plus range, and Toshiba and Western. Just bought a DS1525+ with 5x8TB HAT3310 and another 4x16TB HAT3310 for my old DS918+, the price for everything was very good, and even a little bit cheaper than if I’d bought either Ironwolf or Red drives (new). TBH I’m not too bothered for these work NAS about drive lockin, at the lower price I would have just got Synology drives anyway. If anything, the only thing that might concern me is future availability issues if a drive goes bad!
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I’m a long time Synology user and would have carried on being a Synology user if it wasn’t for the nonsense of being forced to use Synology drives in any new NAS. Since I am in the market for a new NAS … I built my own and left Synology where it belongs – in the dustbin of history. My new NAS/Server/wnatever-you-want-to-call-it was easy to build and of course I had my choice of hard-drives to add to it. Those were the drives I have been buying for years and years and until now have been putting into Synology NAS – WD Red Pro and Ironwolf Pro, and of course I have far more trust in those as brands that I do Synology, since as far as I can tell Synology drives are just rebranded Toshiba drives. While I was buying my WD Red Pro and Ironwolf drives I could see some Synology own-brand drives in the lists on the website I was buying from – they were uniformly more expensive than Western Digital or Seagate drives and in my opinion of lesser quality. So it’s a profit grab by Synoloogy. Good luck to them but I am now an ex-customer and will not be coming back whatever they do.
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They already proven themselves. Remember that poll request e-mails shouting “Please say what we like to hear and we will give you a 1 gacha ticket for UltraRare reward” and their very early discounts solely for 25 series?
They’re understanding the market position in a hard way that they are NOT the Apple Computer. Didn’t people suggested Synology because their software is great? Anyone suggested Synology because of its brand? In this geek niche product market? Yeah. Apple, make iNAS macNAS uh…. Apple NAS… bruh anything with fancy name. Your fanboys may throw a party everywhere.
Also, great point that HDD/SSD companies may backfire Synology. That is a variable I missed.
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I’ve given up hope on Synology NAS. I’ll be happy if sales drop and it goes out of business.
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My DS1817 not that old. Now the Net ports suspect. Looking for a fix then they do this drive shit? Bye Synology.
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Quick answer, the overwhelming majority of their money comes from enterprise/larger business sales vs the regular home user and those large business often couldn’t care less about paying a bit more for the branded drives. Hence they feel they will make more $ than they will lose.
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I was looking to replace my aged DS416 a couple of months ago. Dropped the idea of buying new synology nas as soon as I’ve heard the news. I can install scripts, modify stuff to get around it, but if I’m paying at that price level then there should be no extra steps, no extra hoops to jump through at all. So I went with dyi solution, installed unraid. A shame, I liked interface in dsm, but if synology wants to exit this market then there are ways to do it gracefully without alienating existing customers.
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on a flip side, you might as well say that Synology is saying that their NAS systems are no longer compatible with industry standard devices for sata/nvme/DDR* 🙂
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There’s only one explanation for this Synology decision: they are completely abandoning the soho market. Will see if they are able to get a share of the corporate market.
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I think the key point at here is the insane disconnection between the company and users. I cannot wrap my head around the reason for it.
We know the timeline happened around the introduction of DSM7. We know the outcome from the amount of business oriented movements by them. We know the ways from the sheer amount of anti-consumer decisions.
But why? What are their PR team smoking? I think that may be worth another topic to dive into.
This isn’t just “pulled the rug” from the consumers, this is outright abusing their customers. If NAS isn’t printing cash anymore then why the hell everyone and their mother are entering the market?
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They will only go back on this if they start to lose money, and not a little, otherwise, will never happen. Anyway, I couldn’t care less, I will not buy a Synology again even if they rollback this.
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Just ditched my Synology for an Aoostar WTR MAX, couldn’t be happier and will continue to refer people away from them
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Clippy thinks there is no excuse for what they are doing… this is GREED period end of discussion
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I’d still stick to if, they don’t seem to be in a hurry, so they’ll have to proove their words first… With the negativity out of the way: thanks a lot for the honesty, it’s refreshing to find people not holding back… I’ve always wondered why no one just didn’t say “it’s the money”, and here we are…
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i use TrueNas 🙂 i not have problems 🙂
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I’m still waiting on the perfect NAS that can also double up and be used as a DAS. I’m not talking about the current ASUSTOR NAS/DAS because they fall short of the following specs. It must be only for NVMe SSD drives. The internal tech should have connectivity via USB 4/TBolt as well which can run and hold 6-8+ drives on PCIe 4.0/5.0, using newer AMD 8000x (or higher) family or Intel CPU’s with included minimum 10GBe or faster for the option to use it as a NAS as well.
I can dream, can’t I?
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Wonder if this will work ????
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Synology are finished. They won’t come back from this. My money is on ugreen. They are selling lots of units, making lots of money, meaning their software stack will improve rapidly.
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I really hope they backpedal on this, if not, sure my next NAS will be Ubiquiti
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answer: because apple and now many other companies have been getting away with this shit for years, and decided to say piss off ethics.
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Uh-oh just a talking head video? We’ll Love it as long as it doesn’t go on for over 20 min.
DANG-IT!!!!
????????
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9:40 Keep bring the NAS news. Here’s some ratio help. ????
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I don’t care that i pay for my own family’s healthcare. Those teeth are disgusting.
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You probably want to paste those scripts in yourself at 14:50. You probably don’t want to run scripts from the internet at boot as the source could change to a nefarious one in the future.
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You might want to add the -p option to your mkdirs to eliminate the errors when you run it a second time. Just a little cleaner.
Thanks for another very helpful video.
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You can install Truenas on the ugreen units as well if that is the rout you want to go. Personaly truenas smokes DSM in every way.
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Old Synology. Create pool. Move HDD to new Synology.
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When I tried to use the start_telnet endpoint I got {“success”:false}. Do you know what could cause that? did they patch it already? (I am using DS1825+ Version 7.2.2-72723)
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Thank you Sir ????
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Concerns are, what happens when they update DSM and potentially close the telnet backdoor to allow the initial setup?
Hoping they allow more drives, but I think they’ve done the damage to themselves and many people will not buy their products again.
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The only advantage of Synology disk storage was that the system worked “out of the box.” Currently, there are a huge number of solutions that allow you to create disk storage on any hardware and in any conceivable or inconceivable configurations. But this is more for technically savvy people and those who want to work with such systems. For the majority of users who use disk storage at home, Synology was a good alternative. However, it’s also worth remembering that for home users, who typically use 2-3-4 disk systems, this isn’t a business; it doesn’t bring benefits or profit. A solution like this (with disk locking) is completely unacceptable, for example, for me when I need to replace four 12 TB WD RED PRO drives. And only thanks to the laziness of many people and their unwillingness to look for a good alternative can Synology still be considered a “home” device, although in my opinion, it’s a detrimental solution. For this reason, I’ll stick with old Synology devices for now, but I’ll be looking for an alternative in the future.
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I listen to it all. Love your attention to detail.
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My DS414play isn’t playing nice with new drives anymore, causing load cycles every 3 seconds despite running the current DSM patch. As I’m writing this I’m replacing it with a QNAP device since Synology, by requiring me to buy relabled Toshiba drives for twice the price, have priced themselves out of my budget altogether.
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I listened to your disclaimer. 🙂
I bought a new DS1525+ a few weeks ago. All documentation I saw showed that synology released around that time indicated that third party drives may not fully work. They never said they were locking them out 100%. They did say that if you use third party drives then there would be no warranty.
I obviously did not find this video three weeks ago.
So I returned the ds1525+.
I liked this video, but honestly, like what you said in the disclaimer, it may break at any time in the future at the whims of synology. After this scam, I do not trust them and I do not want to lose my data. I have a life, and I do not see myself trying to babysit their policies over the next few years. It’s not worth the risks.
I would love to see many others buy their NASs and then just return them. Maybe they may get the hints and reverse their toxic policies.
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I’m thinking: Before Synology’s 25-models were released, their new drive-policy was proclaimed.
So why buy a new Synology 25-model NAS when you know your drives aren’t compatible and engage in this cat and mouse game; quite surely Synology will put an end to this command line scripting in the near future.
Instead you could do one of three things:
1. Delay the buy of a new Synology 25-model NAS until the compatibility-list is finished
2. Buy the new Synology NAS but not newer than the 24-models
3. Buy a new NAS from another brand
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Synology turned heel, and I don’t like it!
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Well I predict Synology will change their policy re drive compatibility (it put me off a purchase) BUT… once loyal customers have left a simply change of heart by Synology might not be enough to win them back. If I go the trouble of getting familiar with another OS I’ll be P.Off and won’t be coming back…
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So I recently bought a DiskStation DS1825+ and I migrated from a 5 bay device. I had 3 more drives to add and I was really upset at the issue mentioned, but I ran all the commands and it cleared the issue! I went over and even donated, this really helped me out and my users!
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When it’s time to replace my DS920+ I’ll just buy a competitors unit. Why would I want to do business with a company pulling this crap.
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Today, this trick no longer works for Synology
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The instructions also work if you want to use unapproved internal M.2 NVMe drives for something other than cache on a 923+.
That said, …
Downloading a script from a website that you do not control and then running it automatically (and unsupervised) upon every reboot (or ever) is poor security and business continuity practice. Even assuming the best of intentions of the person/people behind the external website/repo/etc. today:
1. The website/repo/etc. could be hacked.
2. The website could become unavailable — to your client even if not globally.
2. A future update to the script might contain an inadvertent bug that causes problems for you.
I once knew of a significant website outage caused by downloading a JavaScript library from an external website each time the web service was restarted. One day, the external website ceased to exist and the web service would no longer start.
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Dave is a genius. Many thanks to him
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A very ingenious workaround for a product that you should absolutely not buy. Nor should you ever buy any product from Synology.
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Life shouldn’t be this hard, thankfully we have a Dave.
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Thanks for the tutorial I doubt I will be upgrading to a new Synology NAS….
As I have said many times…. The entire POINT of a NAS with multiple bays is to protect against Hard Drive failure.
There is no excuse for demanding “their” drives. and any excuse they might give just makes them look worse.
Is there new line of NAS soooo delicate that it cannot handle the wide range of sizes and power draw?
Or is Synology doing something more nefarious like phoning home data samples direct off the drives.
Maybe even bypassing any encryption you may choose to run on them?
Obviously I have no way of knowing…. but when companies do something like this with such a contrived excuse…
It calls everything they do into question
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this is like installing windows with a local user.
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Synology has made their statement and it’s corporate over end users. I have purchased my last Synology.
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Thanks for this – I don’t have a 2025 model but I had two issues with my 2023 model which annoyed me 1) the IronWolf utlilty wouldn’t work on newer drives so I had 4 drives in my 12 drive array which you could not launch it on and 2) the check for “incompatible” RAM – both fixed by this script.
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Synology is behaving as if it has a monopoly on consumer NAS devices and can get away with charging a premium for old hardware and forcing customers to use their over-priced re-badged hard drives. Synology will be in for a rude awakening as soon as competitors’ operating systems and software catch up and surpass theirs.
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Good luck, you all. Happily returned mine and moving to TrueNAS. Even if Synology did a complete 180 today, reversing this entire bozo idea of theirs, I can never really trust them again. The. Damage. Is. Done.
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When i hear this i’m so happy i picked Ugreen. I wonder howmany users Synology lost.
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I’m still a fan of just buying a Ugreen NAS and installing UnRAID and/or TrueNAS onto it.
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Why bother at this point. Just buy one of the dozens of better products.
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If one needs this, I feel you really don’t need Synology!
It appears that I’ve bought my first *and last* Synology device.
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Just not interested in purchasing a Synology NAS ever again. They are not interested in our business.
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0:15 I was hoping that you’d *beep* out the word Synology for us. ????????
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I was listening to the disclaimer, and I will not be doing this, not worth the hassle or the gloming nightmare… Much better to just change from Synology and keep my piece of mind.
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It’s sad to hear that users have to modify the company’s software themselves to get the product to work as they want.????
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Could you have made the command at 7:19 any smaller?
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I was weighing the buying decision of Synology vs. UGREEN when you did your most recent UGREEN review. I bought UGREEN first day of Prime. Glad I did. Thanks!
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There are so many butt-hurt comments here against Synology. Grow up people.
They make great hardware and the absolute best and easiest to use OS, their branded HDD’s are completely competitive on price and performance.
So why all the tears.
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Hello I bought new synology 925+,but I modify URL, telnet saying FALSE- pleasse help. Do I something wrong? How I reach value “true” ?
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It is legal? If not, why do not use directly Xpenology?
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If you have the script ready to run on boot, can’t you just shut the system off, plug in a new drive and have it be recognized?
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You don’t have to go through all these processes. You can run a script directly on the nas. It works fine, have done it myself already. Am using Ironwolf Pro drives.
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Good
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Looks like the cat and mouse game is about to start. Well, Let’s hope Synology decides not to play this game but rather just uses this only as a method to deny support rather than trying to “brick” the devices that put this script on.
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This video should be just a 3 minutes short video putting HDDs inside the NAS, not a full scale 17 minutes video with complicated operations. What the hell, Synology.
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The whole point of buying a synology NAS is their support and it ‘just works’. Not anymore… Great job on the script, but without support and just working out of the box I may as well build my own NAS next time I need one.
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Dude … the next time you do this and refer to Putty script code without detailing verbally, everything you are writing … make that little black screen as large as possible. Im on a 27 inch monitor and its almost illegible, especially the dark coloured text.
I dont need a 2025 version of Synology hardware, but if I did, I would not be able to replicate what you did there, just not clear enough.
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Synology will likely only add other brands once not doing it financially hurts them.. right now they are making extra money from their own branded drives… if it costs them financially by people just not buying their products at all, then they will add the established brands to it. All they really have to do in order to satisfy their customers is to say that other brands are at your own risk and unlock them… but no, then they wouldn’t sell any Synology hard drives.
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I hope to god … this goes viral.
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A win win for Synology. They still get to sell you the hardware but save money on refusing to support you. This doesn’t change the facts of the uninspiring ’25 releases from a performance perspective, they are still using old chipsets and slow Ethernet ports compared to the competition.
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No… Risking my data like that is not realistic.
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So when they push out an update and you get a message your NAS is no longer available and you can’t access any of your precious data you’ll have to pray that Synology will actually help you recover everything when you are using unauthorized drives and you’ve hacked and “patched” your NAS. Something tells me they won’t and I don’t expect NASCompares or Dave Russell will either. The only way this may be viable is if you disable all DSM updates and block the NAS to use an internal network only. Even with your disclaimer I can’t see this as viable for all but the smallest internal network.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Either buy Synology drives and cough up the extra or else if you want to use any drive then choose a different brand of NAS. I am totally against Synology’s push to lock out other drives but getting back at them with this to enjoy a Nelson Muntz “Ha Ha” moment is fraught with potential risk.
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This is a great band-aid for people who bought this model without knowing about Synology’s betrayal. I would never recommend this model so somebody with the caveat that they would have to use this script and hope that Synology doesn’t break it. I’ll say it again: IF I CAN’T USE THE DRIVES I CHOOSE IN THE NAS THAT I BOUGHT, DO I REALLY OWN THE PRODUCT?
Kudos to Dave though. I can see he has got the spirit from his github PFP.
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2:55 “this could mean”
Let’s not be too optimistic here. This WILL mean they’ll refuse service.
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Synology will almost certainly patch against this in the short term. I wouldn’t be using this for production data under any circumstances.
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This is a great resource, but seriously guys, just save the time and hassle and buy another brand. Watched the whole thing in 1.5x
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I got a bad feeling that a company this dedicated to enshitification will wreck people’s storage pools and then blame the victim with a line like “well you shouldn’t have made me mad”. I foresee them continuing to lose market share and competitors continuing to improve as they gain more market share.
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I’m not jumping through hoops to use their system. So if/when the Synology fails, what hoops would I have to jump through to retrieve the data? Synology can go pound sand.
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TLDR: F Synology, i bought a ugreen 4800+ instead, f synology fuckery
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Yeah, pass, to easy to inject nefarious code into that get repository, and then YOU install it. Skip that and avoid Synology NAS. Then you don’t have to jail brake your NAS OS. Why risk it? Pass.
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Why would I want to pay Synology prices and have them not support it? Nope, still done with them.
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this is exactly why I won’t be buying synology ever again. there always seems to be a hack (same for windows 11), but I don’t want to have to hack my base system. so, no more synology, no more microsoft. simple as that.
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Great video and I appreciate all the effort and analysis to get this out there, well done by all. Perhaps the title of this video could be ‘ I give you fire…’ ☺☺ I am certain to make a hash of it… Cheers mate, thank you.
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How far are we willing to keep buying Synology products? I’m so done with them and I wish more people realize that they paid for freaking NAS. Unless I’m getting one for free, I’ll never do this and be irreaponsible to my beloved data.
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already moved on from syno. not looking back. truenas took some tinkering, but I’m not missing anything.
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I enjoy a challenge, the cat and mouse game as do theirs in finding “work arrounds”, but I dont want to trust all my data to a company that can push out an update and potentially disable my drives. Some things I will do the hack thing with, others things are too valuable to risk it and I shouldn’t need to take on that risk. I appreciate you showing and sharing the work around and giving credit to the author as well.
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great! you come up with this after one week I get another brand NAS …
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I already move to TrueNAS,
Bye Synology
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06:25: “open that Putty application we spoke about earlier” except of course you hadn’t (on the cutting room floor perhaps)?
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⚠ You miss the point. *Why should we trust Synology at all? It makes ZERO sense to buy Synology!* ⚠ (And so we don’t need a workaround or hack) ????
???? *Synology has adopted a strategy based on greed.*
???? *Synology lies to its customers,* because for decades, state-of-the-art disks worked PERFECTLY.
???? *Synology switched off standard apps overnight* – despite millions of users.
⁉ *So why trust the greedy company Synology, which lies to us?*
⚠ *That’s why I’m betting that Synology will soon make its backup solution very expensive.* Then even a cheap disk will be useless.
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wait ’till Synology will block this bypass
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The fact that they chose the least reliable hard drive vendor is just mind-blowing. I was planning to replace my very old Synology NAS with Hitachi drives that I specifically bought for their reliability, but now I have no option.
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Our network is using 3 Synology Nas machines, the oldest is 11 years old and was due to be replaced this year with a 2025 model. Synology have just ruled themselves out of the running with the “Synology only” current policy and waiting for alternative storage to be added to the approved list and risking that a future DCM won’t screw things up, we’ll now migrate to another brand.
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Synology can go broke for all I care. Not buying it anymore.
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I’d like to invite you for a live interview on my channel so we can discuss our very differing viewpoints on this process and how much easier it really is than what you showed. I assure you, this is a genuine invite and I wish to engage in a friendly debate.
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I did. Listen the Full Video.
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I won’t buy any more products from a company that requires me to “hack” their stuff to make it work properly. UGreen must be happy these days. As their productpages says nowadays, “works with 3rd party drives” 😀
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Luckily my ds1621+ and 220+ are new enough and I don’t need to replace them in the near furure.
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I’ve been using this to fix my NVMe’s so I could use them in a DS423+. I’ve just moved to a ugreen DXP 4800+ and tbh I won’t miss Synology, but I get other people are into the ecosystem. Question: why do people still use putty? ssh has been in Windows for a while now – since Windows 10 1803 (May 2018) apparently.
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The video should’ve been 15 seconds long stating “Don’t get a Synology, get literally anything else and you’d be better off on every single aspect”
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Or just dont use synology?
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Synology to do list: 1. remove SSH 2. remove console 3. remove itself from users…
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Skipped
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What disclaimer? LOL, hey… Thanks for this.
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I was on the hunt for a NAS for my company but won´t even look at Synology because of this. The list of conpanies i won´t buy from keep getting longer. Apple, Nvidia,, Samsung are examples of companies that has damaged whole markets. They had a lot of help from stupid customers but tthat don´t make them any better. Synology know they have a big bite of the market and think they can get away with showing their insatiable greed, With enough stupid customers they will get away with it, just like the other companies on my list.
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I still don’t get why you keep making Synology videos. After what they’ve done I’d think there would be less coverage of their products.
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UGREEN ???????????????????????? No headache No complications ⚠️⚠️
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You’re going to have to hope that they don’t decide to encrypt the supported drives database… I’m switching to Ugreen.
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i will probably not buy another synology nas
but just a quick question: is there any nas that has something that does exactly what synology backup for business does?
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I replaced my Synology 918+ and 418+ with two UGREEN DXP4800 Plus. I love the UGOS. It does everything I need. I never looked back.
Also bought a UniFi Dream Router 7 to replace a Synology RT6600AX router.
Now I’m completely out of the Synology ecosystem. I now feel I’ve been catapulted into the 21st century. ????
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Works great now, but what about the next DSM update? it can render your Diskstation useless. i wouldn’t risk that.
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Even though there’s now a workaround (8 months into the model year), Synology still deserves to lose sales due to this nonsense.
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Time to dump Synology. Can’t support this type of behaviour from a company. Vote with your wallet so others don’t follow and try this as well.
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Glad I stayee with 920+ it will likely be my last
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PLEASE can we have a teashirt with words to the effect . . . no more synology
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The fact that this nonsense is necessary to use a device you paid for and own is proof enough that Synology does NOT deserve your money.
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Users with the technical skills to run these screipts – could easily use an alternative NAS brand.
Synology has shot itself in the foot by deliberately reducing useability ????
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wow still shrilling for the use of the anti consumer crap company synology. Who banned people from facebook and twitter for speaking the truth. This is the company you’re still supporting. I lost all respect for this company. The only correct and proper answer is a complete and total boycott of greedy scummy crappy company called synology.
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UGREEN AI NAS iDX6011 is on the way!!!
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Should give a option to optout this “best user experience whitelist programme”
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Don’t know if some Reddit users mess up Dave script method but since the dsm
Update this week , many have critical errors on their storage pool with some Ironwolf or Wd drives.
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You should already be using this script anyways. It removes the warnings in previous hardware versions and allows using 3rd party SSDs to create pools.
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I listened to the whole disclaimer.
Makes one think that if Synology sees what their customers are having to do, if smart, they would then open up other vendors. Also perhaps, this is a marketing genius stroke because of all the free publicity.
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What about security concerns? Who’s going to assure me that Dave won’t run something nefarious with that script? Or, maybe this script is legit now but down the line “Dave” changes his mind and put some crypto locker in that script that will auto download and execute at the first reboot. Ran somewhere anyone?
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Dave’s scripts are amazing.
I wouldn’t count on certified 3rd party drives any time soon. While the question is if there is now a distinction between their recently announced strategic partner Toshiba and other OEMs, a recent reply from Synology – after asking if they had provided 3rd party vendors with the respective tools for verification – stated that they are “working towards providing tools and mechanisms”, which to me sounds like _nothing_ is in the hands of vendors yet.
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When you need to hack a device / OS to use it, it’s not the right device for you.
Honestly, buy their drives or buy something else. It is never a good Idea to run a “hacked” system.
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Taking a script _directly_ from a 3rd party GitHub repository _each time_ a device boots up is *very insecure* . First of all, this leaves you up to the mercy of the owner of that repository (and that their intents do not become malicious one day), and secondly, it can also happen that their repository is compromised by hackers. If any of those 2 happen — voila! — everyone utilizing this “convenience” has now potentially installed a backdoor into their system, or ransomware, or whatever.
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Thank you for your excellent video ????????????????????
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⚠Is it possible to manually upgrade an older model such as DS3615xs with DSM 7.1.1 to the newer DSM 7.2.2, e.g. by installing DSM from another similar NAS station?
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We all need to “message” synology (preferably the idiots in upper management) that this hijacking of HDD aspect is haulting any returning purchases due to this. They have to be told the truth of how F’d up this is. What a shame . . . .I will miss this company.
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Having to use a script on a device you buy, it works, but I wouldnt support a brand that locks down their hardware.
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The entire point of Synology device is simple setup and easy of use. If you have to find a work around for something as simple as using a hdd, then just use Xpeneology or literally anything else.
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I am from 12 months in the future. Synology have just added 8tb Seagate barracuda drives on their verified list. You are welcome. ????
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Gee after watching the full video and seeing how the scripts have to be run again for new drives, I’m beginning to think that I should just avoid Synology NAS all together now. Was going to buy pre-2025 models for future upgrades, but now I’m thinking its going to get harder and harder to use my own drives in the newer versions of NAS post 2025 models. Time to move on for me I think.
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The fact that you need to jump through this many hoops.. and likely end up with an unsupported system, is all the reason in the world to buy QNAP….
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Now that this info is out in the wild how long before Syno makes an update that negates it?!?!
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it simply shows that there is no reason for synology to be assholes any hard drive should work in their systems.
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Interesting, yet I am absolutely sure I would never entrust any production level data to a system that was setup through such a back door. The risk for Synology implementing nasty changes is just too high.
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I wonder if trying to block this workaround is more work than just restoring the pre-2025 supported drive model database from tape ????
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Well done to the guys behind this initiative. I’ll probably change from Synology when I upgrade. They don’t deserve me or my money. Thanks Robbie.
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And then, synology update that brick your installation. I appreciate nascompares follow-up, but for me it’s 0% viable, even in the short term.
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Hacknology
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I’ve been using this script for few years already, on other models. Works great to be honest. No issues.
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It was even easier. I got a UNAS Pro. Synology is a dead product
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I wonder if you still will receive Synology hardware to test after this video, but I do like that you made this video!
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Few here would need such a script because not many here would’ve purchased a 25+ model. I also feel that even with this script, most here wouldn’t opt for the 25 series when there are 21/22/23 and 24 series models available without any HDD lock-ins. besides, the 25+ range offer little by way of upgrades, instead removing options or being essentially the same bar the 2.5Gb E.
I believe no one should buy the 25+ series despite this script “fixing” the key issue. It sends the wrong message to Synology if sales of their new range go largely unaffected as a result of user script bypasses, bypasses that Synology could use to refuse all and any support on modified units regardless if the issue relates to HDD’s or not.
Why reward Synology by working around their issues and adding to sales of the 25+ range?
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You really do not want this on your NAS. I want a NAS to be 100% reliable. Synology was 100% reliable also with 3rd party disks, which makes their new policy marketing BS. A 25 model with this tinkering, is for sure not 100% reliable. It will become a cat and mouse game where synology finds a counter solution after wich the community finds a cure and so on and so on. Was about to update my synology model in 2025, now waiting one more year to see what will happen. Option A: synology will allow 3rd party drives again, and I might be sticking to Synology. Option B: see how Ugreens OS is developping and if that goes well, I am joining the Ugreen fan club.
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I have a Synology today, and I will continue to use it as long as it works, but the next NAS is likely some other brand
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Hi, do you think that Synology can patch or block that hack ? Basically releasing a DSM update to block that kind of modification in the futur ?
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Holy cow. Yesterday I received a shipment of Synology drives because I’m switching from a DS216 to a 25+. Just my bad luck.
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Hi its M 27 min after video release – VERIFIED LIST STILL NOT UPDATED SYNOLOGY CMON
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Tsk, tsk…soon you’ll be making a video on how people can install DSM as a VM in Proxmox. No Christmas card from Synology for you 😛
I wonder if Synology has a way of tracking this hard drive script usage through telemetry. If I were Synology I’d be interested in knowing how many customers want to go this route rather than buying Synology branded drives. Not necessarily to block the script from running, but getting some customer insight.
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6:27 Synology will fix this asap.
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Ideally, Synology would accept this or say they won’t support the unverified drives but allow you to use them anyway. But whenever its a matter of revenues being disrupted, I think we can expect they’ll take actions to try and stop this from working. Expect something extremely anti-consumer such as the verified hdd list being encrypted and only modifiable with some synology master key
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Have you tried the 30TB drives in the Zettlabs nas?. Thanks In advance
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Too risky, Synology will, for sure, overwrite the config file at some point, then you’ll find your NAS won’t start, so no ssh to get back in to change the config back. The whole point is to have rock solid file storage. Do a test, change it, create a pool and volume. Then change the config file and reboot. It sounds like Dave has an answer for everything, which is good, but I’d do that test above, if Dave hasn’t already. I have TrueNas on a separate drive on a TerraMaster – all data is on other drives. I could rebuild the OS drive and re-import the pools and config. If you had a mirrored pair isn’t the Synology OS, and your data, on that same mirrored pair? Will that cause an issue with recovery?
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UGREEN all the way…. forget about shitology!
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DSM and its Apps like Snapshot Replication, Cloudsync and mainly Active Backup is the only selling point of Synology in competition with ZimaOS, Ugreen or TrueNAS. I still do not believe them but they are ways ahead in this customised Apps /no, docker apps do not count here/.
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What’s the point in using all those workarounds when it comes to companies that put up barriers with their products like Synology does at the moment or Microsoft does with Windows 11? Wouldn’t it make more sense to look at solutions to completely get away from companies like that?
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Synology is dead to me.
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The shift key is right below caps lock 😉
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Well done! Easy workaround. Thanks for sharing this. Much appreciated ????
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This is one of the reasons why I am no longer a Synology customer.
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Synology is on my do not buy list for family, friends and businesses. Over HDD lock down and weak CPUs and charging a premium.
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Synology just became relevant again.
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It’s good to have workarounds, but it’s better to not use a product that turned against the customers that made it.
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Bro, you know your stuff. Learned a ton. Keep it up
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Basically they took away something from everything i used a lot
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I bought camera licenses, and feel totally ripped off , with the downgrading of the software
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Synology for a long time rested on the quality of their software at the cost of the hardware. You payed a lot for specs that were at the lower end of the market and often consisted of older processors. With the recent limitations of HDD’s they crossed the line for me: the quality of the software no longer is worth having to compromise on everything else. My next NAS won’t be a Synology.
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my QNAP stopped working only after 2 years, my Western digital keeps on trucking, QNAP NOT RECOMMENDED
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Thanks for the good comparison video! I still have my original DS209 (not actively using it but may still for backups albeit very, very slow by today’s standards). I’m still married to my DS916+ and yesterday, became engaged to the bridesmaid, ASUSTOR AS6806T – we’ll be married in August when she arrives . I still love Synology pretty much because of the software side of matters, but the ASUSTOR provides superior high-speed connectivity which is what I really need now and going forward.
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As someone who has 3 truenas r50 with 400tb each I can tell you they’re simply not that difficult to learn. Synology is not an option in my small labs which support the government because they’re not really secure. That’s why they’re not even an option for us to buy truenas hardware was running full self encrypting drives and hence was an option where we cannot buy synology for very small airgap labs. They use Buffalo nas because they are FIPS and TAA compliant which is the bare minimum requirement for federal government use
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Why even recommend nas from Chinese companies, like Ugreen? Why?
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WEek harware puls drive lock is too much to defend synology in any way… I dont miss anything they offer regarding their software
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Review orico meta cube
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TrueNAS has simplified by migrating from Kubernetes to Docker Compose.
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that’s crazy how I was so close buying a synology to upgrade my wd ex4100 and found out about those restrictions. I can’t even buy synology drives here in Brazil, even though I can buy their nas in some vendors. And what I was supposed to do with all the ironwolfs I have? Crazy move by synology, all I see is people leaving.
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Let me play Devil’s Advocate. If I am in the market for my first NAS and I buy Synology HDDs, how is that a bad thing? A quick price search suggests I may pay $20 more per drive when I buy Synology drives. That’s not a deal breaker for me considering Burger King drive through is around $15.00 and a pizza is $30. I can see where this would be aggravating for anyone who currently owns a Synology system and wants to upgrade. You would have to buy all new drives. But, what about those of us building our first system?
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I’m looking for my first NAS for home use. It will only be a 2 bay NAS in RAID 1. Reading the comments and comments on other videos has me shying away from Synology.
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does anyone of those support a similar implementation of Synology’s SHR?
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No 3rd party drive support is now the final destination of Synology for me. i still have one that doesnt has this shit. but my next nas wont be a synology anymore.
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Here me out, we all buy ugreen and then they get so much money that they can afford to put more work into the OS
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Awesome comparison. Very thorough, yet still not too extensive.
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What would you recommend then? I don’t need a vast amount of storage, <16tb. It will only be used for backup and media server. 2x8tb or 4x4tb and what platform? I do not have an infinite budget.
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Bye bye Synology, competitors have better specs and don’t lock self-branded drives, what a way to shoot yourself in the foot.
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Got a Ugreen DXP2800 for £264, a pair of Ironwolf 8TB for £270, a pair of WD Red 500GB for £98 and a stick of 16GB CL40 RAM for £34.
Good deals?
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Are there any DIY brands that aren’t chinese that you’d recommend?
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There. You said it as plain as day. TrueNAS may be free, but what you save in money, you will lose in time. I have given up on TrueNAS and have just started trialing unRAID. Thank you. You have been an invaluable resource since I started planning to migrate away from a bunch of older QNAP devices.
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Bought a Chinese NAS (TerraMaster, UGREEN)? Say hi to the CCP — your data’s probably already in their cloud ????
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I like how ugrreen looks. Synology looks like something you’d hide because of its stealthy look. Ugreen looks like something that could live in sight and even add something to the room.
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Lib Dems are in a roll & Labour’s in flames.
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Years ago, I had both a Synology 5-bay and QNAP 5-bay NASes. Both were certainly OK, but what was the most annoying to me were both companies using marketing terms for every feature and setting. Because I don’t have to manage both on a daily basis, whenever I went back to set up something, I would have to do ~30 minutes to re-acquaint myself on what their marketing names actually meant. A few years ago, I took the plunge on building my own NASes using somewhat standard x86 components. I choose TrueNAS Scale as the OS for my NASes. At the beginning, there were some teething pains as there were a few annoying bugs. But that process has smoothed out over time and the software quality of TrueNAS Scale has improved alot (especially related to its application environment). So I’ve been pretty satisfied with TrueNAS Scale. Since it’s based on linux and uses more standard terminology, it’s much easier for me to use than either Synology or QNAP.
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Have an old NAS (Zyxel) for basic file sharing for more than 7 years. The device has show it age regarding features and speed; but what really really annoyed me what the inability to setup a 3 – 2 – 1 backup scheme using this device.
I bought a simple basic 1 drive synology nas for a friend and I’ve blown away how easily was to setup the 3 -2 -1 backup scheme in his pc and laptop , plus syncing document between his machines and his cloud drives and lastly setting up a off site backup to Amazon glacier at a fraction of the cost of commercial alternatives.
Recently my wife deleted by mistake some files in my old NAS and i’ve not been able to recover them even at low level, that could be easily been fixed using snapshots or off site backups, but my old device does not support it.
Save to say that a Synology DS723+ is on the way after this big data lose, the device price is just a fraction of the value of the data you may lose if you don’t have an easy mean to backup everything like what synology allows. Hardware means nothing if the software does not allow to easily and correctly protect your data.
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I love how people keep saying Synology is dead now. Not true at all. Synology still has every other NAS manufacturer beat on everything except value for money and sometimes CPU speed.
???? QNAP and ASUSTOR has worse reputation with randomware than Synology (Synology had as well, but theirs were due to outdated software or weak passwords, and not brand new zero-days)
???? UGREEN and Ubiquity doesn’t support shared folder encryption, making them unappealing for business use.
???? Ubiquity doesn’t support multiple storage pools or apps
???? ASUSTOR and QNAP doesn’t have any attractive 12+ bay NAS’es at reasonable prices (the LOCKERSTOR 12 series either has a crappy Atom CPU, worse than Synology, or an overpriced Xeon 9, costing way more than Synologys options and consuming way more power. The QNAP ones use weak Arm CPU’s). The entire “Value for money” argument disappears for high end units.
As someone who’s currently in the market for a 12 bay NAS with a reasonable CPU and with the best software features available, who has to have that NAS exposed to the internet to service clients, i sadly keep coming back to Synology. I wish it weren’t so, but I’ve researched the market, and i don’t see any other options. The ASUSTOR/QNAP high end options are extremely expensive and have some weird CPU choices. And there’s still nothing that beats Synology’s software features. The Synology RS2324+ is probably gonna be my choice, unless they come out with a new model (like RS2426+).
As for the disk lockout Synology imposed, it has already been easily hacked, both on new and old units. I’d rather hack my way around that, than go with a subpar NAS from another brand.
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I personally use Truenas, but I just use mostly file storage, 10Gbe, etc. that said, working with my clients Ubiquiti’s device is getting attention. Their integration with their cameras and AI options with their NVR are (and I’ll say this) better already then Synology and you don’t pay licensing per camera. Good mixed support as well. Their backup agent is actually decent and I believe will continue to improve, but in business we use mostly a mix of Acronis or Veam agents so less worried. As a raw target, Truenas is perfect for larger applications and Unifi is becoming ideal for midrange.
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Sounds like a strong Synology shill overall.
You didn’t mention any privacy aspects, which can sometimes be concerning with Synology, especially if compared with Asustor.
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which among those NAS support H265+ hardware encoding
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In my opinion Synology is killing itself with its almost Dictatorial way it is handling the HDD issue. I was put off by the security issues which seemed to have plagued QNAP over the past year and beyond. Instead I decided to go the TrueNAS route. It has a lot of scalability. But, as you rightly pointed out it is not a user friendly system to understand and it is a large learning curve to master. The other top brands likes of Asustor, QNAP and Synology everything is designed user friendly with wonderful GUI’s easily laid out for the most part. Whereas sure the information is there with TrueNAS but it is not as easily accessible. Of them all I would put TrueNAS up there as the most scalable of them all with some wonderful features especially in the backup area already built into it and easily setup, once you know how. And there is TrueNAS’s not failing, but, instead its learning curve. Plus the fact you have to essentially build your own NAS system. But you could also set it up in a tower or mid tower with a M.2 and say 2 HDD’s or 4HDD’s looking just like a PC but is a home built NAS with any motherboard or CPU, making use of an older pc for example. You learn so much more than just how to setup and configure a NAS you get into the how it all goes together. How it all communicates. Like anything, it all takes learning and it all comes down to how much some people want to learn. If you want something off the shelf and plug and play then TrueNAS is not simply for you for the most part. While as mentioned in this video it is cheap as in free to get, it is a big learning curve. Although, once you have gotten to grips with how it works then you are also unlocking a very very powerful NAS system with huge scalability options. But in saying that TrueNAS does have its own pre setup systems as well. I have not tried them, like I have with say Synology. But, Synology lost me with their rigid demands now in their newer generation. We all setup things for different reasons. Some just to play, some to learn and others for serious reasons like redundancy or backups for their business. All have their benefits and all have their disadvantages. What suits one might not suit another. Thank you for a good video explaining about a lot of the more well known ones out there. I also thank you for giving the good and the bad :). Keep safe and well everyone and have fun 🙂
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I remember considering terra master that many years ago, they had the cheapest 4-5 bays at the time. I wonder how they stack up now, let’s watch the video
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Synology doesn’t support the third-party hard drives now
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I just need a system that reliably runs Jellyfin, from a company that des not take away working software solutions. Synology fck you for taking away DS Video.
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Best for simple user file shares? That’s the main thing I used with apple server.
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This isn’t exactly on topic, but I love your videos and you always know your stuff. So, I’m hoping to ask; when I do upgrade my NAS from a 2 bay to a 4 bay, do I need an Ethernet switch?
Also I got a Synology for the plug in play experience. I’m apparently not as mad as a lot of people, because I don’t mind them building the whole NAS. Could be a complete, plug and play package.
That being said I’d love to learn more about DYI, seems like something fun to tinker with. If you ever do your favorite DYI NAS setup, I’d definitely be interested.
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TrueNAS is complex. Ok. Good. It should be. Why would running a NAS be simple? If people wanted simple they would stick with Apple and having their libraries in iCloud. We don’t do these things because they are simple. We do them because they are hard… umm, I think I’m repeating what I said in ‘62, but it still applies
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Their move to proprietary re-stickered drive support is a bad move. End of story. I have a group of 50,000 people I actively pushed Synology on an almost daily basis that I’ve since change the tune to Ugreen, Asustor and custom Unraid builds respectively.
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Brilliant breakdown of the pros and cons of the major & minor players. It seems that the major issue is the software, so why isn’t there someone creating an all encompassing, highly robust, GUI/command line optional interface. That can run on legacy systems and the latest and greatest technologies? We have the abilities, so what’s the bloody problem? I don’t mean to sound overly simplistic, but…
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I wish there was more compact NAS Case for DYI. Like cases for 2 HDD and more SSD for example. Not everybody wants a lot of hard drivers ????
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You can’t spell Synology without NO, it’s already dead to me.
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Presumably one can do pretty well by using secondary markets to buy older Synology systems, which in all but the current year were the greatest things going.
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Really good video, Robbie. I am happy user of Jonsbo N5 + N3, both with unRAID, thanks to your videos.
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so ugreen it is
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First off, great comparison video!!
I got my first NAS, Synology DS216play, in 2016 and upgraded to new Synology DS720+ in 2023. Same HDD from 2016, lol. I’ll wait another 5 years before deciding if I need/want to migrate away from Synology then. My main Synology app usage has been, Photo Station (back then) and now Photos. I do stream video to Jellyfin and other minimal stuff
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Probably an unpopular opinion, but I want my NAS to hold files and deliver them to other things. Not be a jack of all trades.
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How does Xpenology compare to Synology? Will they suffer from the same limitations users are trying to get away from? Or would moving to a NAS that allows 3rd party OS’s with Xpenology be a valid move?
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Was planning to invest in a synology nas this year, but will be looking elsewhere due to their recent decisions moving forward.
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So if I want mixed drives, it’s either Terramaster or DIY+UnRAID?
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26:20 ” you pay in time less than you do in money”, don’t worry, soon you can pay $300 for HexOS / TrueNAS easy mode ????
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soooooo…..waiting for minisforum ai nas……
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Super helpview overview. Thanks
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Been with QNAP for years. Kinda baked into my business now, though the UGREEN looks interesting and the new Minisforum looks like it would make an awesome plex server!
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I would always prefer QuTS Hero over DSM. I only use my NAS boxes as NAS, and for that purpose QNAP is simply better, whether we’re talking hardware or software options IMO.
With Synology’s new HDD policy it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better, quite the opposite. ????
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I just need to a NAS to backup photos and replace apple cloud subscription. Which NAS would be the best for this? Thanks.
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I was due a replacement for my Synology ds420 as it is full and slow. Thanks to their 25:19 attitude, I dropped them and ended up building my own and use OMV 7 since it handles everything I need. But sorry, I think it can out complicate truenas
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My 8 bay Synology died after a power issue (long story short, my UPS failed to protect me from a series of power failures). I’m now looking at that as a blessing in disguise. I’ve switched to a self built unRAID system. I did manage to recover all my data from the NAS drives by mounting them on a Linux box. I really don’t like the way Synology are going and am happy have been given the “opportunity” to get out of their eco system.
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I’m new to NAS and looking to buy my first system. While probably the most beginner-friendly system, I have a aversion to companies like Synology pulling sh*t like this. So I was thinking about buying UGreen as it’s system looks quite beginner-friendly as well. As I understand, it’s also possible to change the OS on the UGreen to TrueNAS, is this correct? Don’t want to jump straight in TrueNAS as it seems much more complex but maybe once I’ve gained experience with a NAS (and courage), it’s nice to have the possibility to change to TrueNAS. Is everything I’m saying correct and/or would someone advice me otherwise?
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This channel seems to love synology and everyone in the comments seems to hate them.
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it’s really sad because Synology was a favorite when it came to Nas I think the best alternative is to build one yourself but I mean build it yourself with off the shelf parts I wouldn’t trust any of the mini PCs for the same reason I wouldn’t trust Ugreen
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Was about to buy a synology until they started locking down drives. Asustor got my money instead!
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Since I’m a poor man with simple habits, I use a PC with Open Media Vault. ????
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All I care about is SHR, if any other supplier can offer that or similar I’d be happy to explore others.
I’m not getting locked into synology drives.
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Here’s my beef list, as a strictly rackmount buyer who only use Synology for backups across multiple sites of laptops, local filesystem services, MS365. Other requirements: 10 gig SFP+, minimum 8 bays – preferably more.
– Synology: All rackmount products are old. (I don’t care about the hard drive thingy.)
– Ugreen: Don’t have any rackmount
– QNAP: Everything just feel a bit crappy about these
– Asustor: Ugly hardware. I really mean that, the disk systems are like bad old sci-fi systems
– Terramaster: Unstable
– DIY: Don’t have the time. Not sure if I can make it secure and stable enough. I’m doing this for use of the thing, not because I like to tinker
– Ubiquiti: Not sure if their backup is good enough, and max 7 bays
– Unraid: A system that requires setup by consultants?? What a dumb idea. Let me pay for good standardized stuff, please
Conclusion: I hope my old Synology machines don’t die 🙁
Honestly, it feels like no company really want to provide good products for small’ish businesses like mine. This used to be a pretty profitable market and now it feels deserted. There are lots of user systems, ranging from very small to very good. And there are plenty of enterprise level systems. But almost nothing in the middle.
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Been a synology User for over 20 years.. A year ago I bought my first QNAP NAS and I have to say, with the exception of Surveillance station, my software needs have been met. I recently bought an upgrade for my old Synology Camera NAS, selecting the DVA6122 and it is likely to be my last Synology NAS. When it comes time to updrade my 4 Bay Synology NAS, in a year or so time, it wont be with a Synology one.
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80 years later and still everytime Robbie mentions QNAP he mentions deadbolt. C’mon Robbie that was due mainly to users not doing the right thing but its been over & done so we can move on
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I much prefer my custom build, much cheaper, fully customizable, and does exactly the same as the rest.
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Synology DS1522+ or DS925+?
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What about HexOS?
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Bought in 1 may 2025 ugreen 4800 plus. It replaced my synology ds918+. Faster and more memory(64gb)
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i know its been a long video….
dude, please, im in for 5 hr video of comparison…. i know most of them and still would enjoy watching.
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Hi guys any suggestion for file deduplication docker to run in the NAS ?
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10:33 Wut-wut-wut?? “Lockerstor Gen2 PLUS coming soon”?! ???? May we please have some more info on that?
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UnRAID rules
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I think qnap is better, hero wise.
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I’m hoping that by the time my 1621+ bites the dust another company has polished their software enough for me to jump ship.
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Since I only use my NAS for storage, I’ll probably go with the Ugreen instead of another Synology.
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I want to switch from synology to ugreen. My main use case is a Plexserver. Is the migrating process rather easy (reduced to assigning the storage location + copying the database), or will it be more complicated than that?
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Thank you very much for this! I really appreciate your opinion of the wife gamut of brands and free options!
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does Ugreen’s UGOS have Cloud Sync as does DSM? this is the 1 thing i really need the NAS and OS to do, easily backup my Dropbox business account!!! anyone??
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Two things made me upgrade from my DS412+ years ago to Unraid – the Syno Docker UI is awful (no “update all containers” option STILL), and to upgrade you need to replace the whole unit. While my Unraid NAS is much more DIY, for less than the price of a new 4 bay Syno DS, I’ve got a much more flexible, powerful, and upgradable 15 drive 4U server now.
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Thanks for this video Synology is still king for having Hyper Backup and Active Backup for Business. None of the competitors have come close, and no just having RSYNC doesn’t make it a backup solution. I will say I am using a old ProLiant computer to run TrueNAS core as a S3 block storage device for part of my 3-2-1 backup solution. Until I can find a NAS platform that provides the integrity of a good backup solution I will have to stick with Synolgoy.
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Long time Synology user here, just made the leap to Ugreen. Bought the DX4800+, added 2 SSD’s and upped the mem to 32gb. Would never go back to Synology, it’s that good. Sure, you mis some things (Hybrid mode for your disks, only conservertave raid or jbod setups). It’s responsiveness and speed are so nice. Ugreen sure made waves with their nas systems. And if you don’t like it, just use a open source hardware OS to install. No vendor lockin!
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Would you review the new beelink me mini? It has 6 nvme slots with integrated heatsinks AND 45w psu inside.
If you do get one, do tinker with it like adding a m.2 to sata, you probably need 180 degrees m.2 adapter as the slot is facing the “integrated heatsink” which is genius ngl.
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So do any of the alternatives have a similar hybrid file system where you can mix drive sizes? To me that’s the killer feature that Synology brings to the table.
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What about the Ubiquiti UniFi UNAS Pro? It has a rather narrow application focus but still counts as a NAS and in terms of usability (for whom that is important) might even beat Synology.
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11:15 Taiwan isn’t in China. But I’m beginning to see why you were allowed to film in a NAS factory in China.
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Only reason I say change to Unraid is because it’s the intermediate between easy made solutions with sacrificing features for the power user. Plus, there are tons of tutorials on YouTube on how to set it up and step by step videos on how to install Docker containers, use Tailscale, set up proxies, use VM’s, and anything else you might need. With the introduction of ZFS it’s that much better. Lastly, as far as support is considered there are discord channels dedicated to helping each other with issues when you come across them. I would argue that’s better than anything Synology can offer.
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truenas core user from day one 5years ago and yes its a learning curve but theres youtube videos out there to help you .
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Thank you for a good video. My Synology 718+ is not going to be replaced by a new one from Synology. They have shown sign of gread for some time. It’s sad because their software is really good. I got my self an Terramaster f6-424 max but it takes time to learn new things. The Terramaster would even when having It’s own os fit well into the os free nas as you have some good hardware that is open for several choices of software. I run TrueNAS Scale at the moment but think I will try CasaOS on it because I don’t like the way TrueNAS forced me to use both nvme drives for the os, or it might have been a user error from my side.
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On “usability”: I configured my NAS units once and since then never had to interact with them again, with the exception of a one time setup of a backup channel. I venture to claim that the vast majority of users are the same and just don’t need “usability” (outside accessing the NAS content via standardised interfaces) to be that good. The subpar Synology hardware and their limiting policies carry much more weight than how the UI looks like and whether some exotic feature is available or not. Also, usability on many other competitors will get better while Synology’s policies will only get worse, if history tells us anything.
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I’ve got two Terramaster that’ve been going strong for 5 years now — both upgraded to TOS 6. Mostly use them for photos, media, and running 3 Docker containers. They’re still holding up fine, honestly. Not really thinking about UGREEN for now. It’s only been out for just a year? Way too fresh for a NAS system if you ask me. Not trying to be their beta tester, y’know?
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and noticed as well that you are SYNOLOGY biased in this episode…
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Bro.. my office runs with 6 synology boxes… fine… we are using them strictly as NAS !!!
So synology is NO NO for 2025+, therfore i will settle for 10Gb Ugreen beast and be a king.. AI will help the software devs there (as it probably does) and all the “other” kinky stuff will very quickly come in !!!
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I replaced my Synology for QNAP, the user experience is of course not the same but I don’t miss anything.. And I have 2,5GB ethernet ????
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Honetly, when it comes to software DSM is the best. you can’t get surveillance station anywhere else. active backup either. even VMM is amazing. Its so easy to use and it doesn’t piss you off even if your’re a vet in the NAS world. DIY BUILD + ARC LOADER for me
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I’m so impressed with the UGREEN DXP4800 Plus that I’ve already bought another one, having upgraded from the Synology DS918+.
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Synology : “hey NASCompares here is 1 million dollars so you can keep making good videos about us”
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Still giving Synology the time of day. STOP IT!!
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Synology cooked itself. I’ll be buying UGREEN for my next NAS.
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If you’re at the Enterprise Business level – Synology is a probable solution. However sorta like what IBM did many years ago. The more or less started a revolution with the consumer PC market but then decided that the profit margin did not meet their business model and left that market for others. They left the consumer printer business, they left the (mostly) the OS business and even left the laptop market where they were actually doing kinda well. Synology is slowly (quickly?) leaving the mass consumer market.
Great video for where many of us might be heading.
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Have used Synology until now. Not even looking at them any more…
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Anyone have the UGREEN 8 bay?
What’s it like just for basic backups for my GOG game library and as a media server(mostly Plex), I don’t really need transcoding as I have a little NUC under the tv that I play through from the NAS.
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Moved over 8 devices between personal and business from Synology to UGreen DXP6800 Pro + TruNAS. The hardware is just way ahead of Synology and TruNAS gives the features. I have an extra 4800 I have been playing with with the UGOS. It has potential, but it needs more time in the oven.
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I’m an idiot and I’m headbutting TrueNAS for my first ever NAS. I definitely got it working! But I did pay in time lol
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This is going to push the SOHO NAS market up like crazy, without Synology. Competition is good. I’m not ready to switch just yet, I’ll watch for 8-10 years, need lots of popcorn
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I’m just running simple backups and a 10TB Plex server. Terramaster serves me well! I’ll eventually build a homelab with a spare 7950X and some other parts I have lying around but that’s for another time. Till then, my Terramaster happily handles 3-4 concurrent streams + transcode, no problem.
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Speaking from experience over many years in the industry, I must say that this video and your channel is top notch when it comes to NAS information & recommendations. Personally I’m using TrueNAS but as you say, be prepared to spend a lot of time fine tuning it no matter how much experience you may think you have. ???? Excellent video! Thanks for sharing.
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One great thing about Unraid that I feel is underappreciated, I’ve tested various NAS softwares a while ago to decide which one would have been the replacement for my WD Mycloud, and Unraid peoved to be the only one which reliably managed to spindown HDDs when they arent needed, which can actually save you a fair amount of money if you have lots of drives that are mainly used for backups.
TrueNAS seems a more interesting system but the spindown just doesn’t work properly
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I’m on synology now & my next nas will be either truenas or unraid (haven’t decided yet). I will try my best to replace the pieces I use with open source. Immich for example for synology photos but I don’t know if there will be a replacement for everything (active backup for business for example) but that is ok. I work on Linux a lot so it won’t be much of a jump for me. I really don’t like any of the premade solutions but if I had to choose one it would probably be ugreen
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Looking for a box to run nextcloud. Want to expand the raid and have easy restorable backups. Is that ugreen? Unifi?
Are any of these brands sending file hashes to their origin?
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Unifi not even on the list. Are they so bad? (Haven’t tried their nas. APs good)
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I have 2 WD nas. For the last 6 years, no breakage, flawless updates, not one single problem, no proprietary bs software. So basically synoshit and the others are just marketing bs.
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i am using synology in the office using their active directory server. for a small network (synology says up to 200 workstations ! i have 15 workstations) this works like a charm out of the box and saves you to buy a dedictaed server. with the windows server tools you can also define policies. I did this just for automatic windows updates. I could master this as a complete stranger to windows server. but you do not really need that for a working network setup. another thing is that Synology’s technical service is out of this wolrd good. used them for one of their own mistakes in an update and two of my own mistakes. they solved all three within longest two days. that alone makes me to stay with synology even with their own drives.
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I was on the cusp of buying a 923+ or 1522+ but after the proprietary lock down I went with a QNAP 464.
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Newer Synology is a bummer, pretty sure most of us especially their budget and middle class customer just pissed off so hard with their new policy.
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Lets comment on the MARKET players #1 Synology – arrogant ..keeps kicking these terrible own goals. Is in decline propped up by DSM. Delusional about entering enterprise space. #2 QNap – Deadbolt legacy remains -not proactive enough. Product range very large and spread thin – Confusing ZFS/EXt4 file system product line -No actual direct competitors for many Synology products -Does not compete on price – Generally is a too little too late competitor #3 Asustor Software good but ease of use just not there compared to DSM -Management suffers delusions about being a “name” brand with pricing to match – Deadbolt legacy remains- Third tier Taiwanese manufacturer should be more aggressive in the market but keeps kicking own goals on pricing -Conclusion could be a strong competitor with a better Software front end (everything is there under the skin) and a realistic pricing structure to gain market share but will be an also ran due to delusions of grandeur.#4 Ugreen- Upstart Chinese brand with great launch pricing -the current “hot girl” in the market -Software lacking security features -is destined to be a darling of home users -Conclusion Chinese CCP “it” girl #5 Terramaster – Genuinely interesting products at excellent price points -Software better then expected and is easier to use then most – Deadbolt legacy – Conclusion Chinese CCP Mainstream player #6 Unas/Trunas/Homemade whatever – Hackers and homelabs -enough said really -not really a NAS solution more a hobby. #4 the unmentioned dark horse Ubiquiti UNAS – if you want Network attached storage this is #1 choice even with Synology – software does network attached storage and backups well doesn’t try to do anything else (you want docker and other stuff see #6 and go tinker) New 4 and 16 bay versions coming – in it for the long haul and a big player – Will replace Synology eventually but not with a single box solution – Conclusion the Elephant in the room.
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Truenas offers zero day one support even for their paid hardware! Beware of iXSystems
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Even with the changes I’m probably going to be putting a couple of Synology devices in at a customer specifically for those extra pieces. ABB to back up key workstations, probably internal email and chat servers (outside access not required). The decision is likely to come down to a 25+ device vs an older model with 10Gb.
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I’ll just keep my low power windows 10 PC (i12100) as my file and plex server. Works well, not too power hungry, and it gives me a 2nd windows pc as a backup if my main pc crashes.
Synology just burst the NAS bubble. It’s not so glamour anymore to have a dedicated NAS.
FYI you can raid those HDDs in windows for free. I am using it for 3 years now while waiting for the ds1823.. 1824..1825+!
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The limited HDD choices are a deal breaker for me. I cancelled my 925+ Order and am rethinking what my next system will be.
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Dude. Considering you are a NAS officianaodo, talking about TrueNAS Scale and Jails in the same breath is an embarrassment. If you don’t know ,TrueNAS Scale is now based on Linux (Debian) and thus uses docker by default, plus have all the hardware support and top tier networking that is Linux, then boy you need to start catching up.
Dunno why you didn’t mention Open Media Vault either. Oh well.. Maybe next time.
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Don’t forget that many of these are from China. I personally do not want that.
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As always, great overview Robbie – Thanx Mate ????????????????????????????????????????
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Locking down hard drives makes it impossible to want to count on Synology moving forward, so I’m looking for an alternative – but the key feature I can’t confirm anyone else has an alternative for is being able to mix & match various hard drive sizes to increase pool size without replacing all current drives.
I’ve got a Synology with four 14 TB drives but I’d like to be able to slowly increase capacity instead of having to buy a full suite of 20TB drives or something.
Is there any alternative for that, am I out of luck, or should I really just go the DIY NAS route?
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I’m sorry, but I don’t like this video at all. this very fast clicking, side-by-side comparison in ultra speed makes it hard to watch. It is a good overview about Synology’s competitors and I’m at the point where I have ordered my first Ugreen NAS but the way of presentation has to come back to some kind of normal speed.
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I have a UGreen 4800plus and love it but the only really (current) glaring hole in their software is the inability to back up a complete image to an external drive. I recently switched over all my misc of drives (using the JOBD pool type) to RAID 5 and the only thing I could do was nuke it all and start over. Not a huge deal since I only had about a TB of data on it at the time, but still it was something I thought would have automatically been there.
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Why waste time with Synology only to be vendor locked for the drives?
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Outside looking in (I went with the TrueNas route – and everything you said is true about it – I’m lucky to know 1% of it) if this year sometime, Synology blesses some third party drives then much of of the handwringing will go away. Time will tell.
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I am actually considering moving from truenas core to synology.
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F Synology
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The biggest issue with UGreen is that they’re a Chinese based company (Shenzhen) vs Taiwanese (Synology / QNap). They’ve been unashamedly copying Synology without regard to IP.
I’m most concerned about their security because being China based, why to hack into your synology NAS when you can willingly put your data into their hardware already…..
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My new gen 3 asustor 10 bay is pretty sweet.
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I suspect Synology may change their mind, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I am in the process of setting up a new UGreen 6 bay NAS (it will take some time, currently running full disk read/write tests on 6 twenty terabyte drives). This will replace two older Synology NAS and leave my DS423+ as the only remaining Synology NAS on my home network. Looking at sources for Synology branded drives, they aren’t outrageously more expensive, but the lock-in certainly leaves a bad taste. I feel sorry for those who will be forced to either pay more for Synology or learn something like TrueNAS scale. I’ve dealt with ZFS on a professional level for more than 20 years, so it isn’t a big issue with me. This is a big opportunity for competitors to gain market share and invest money in their software.
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Thanks for mentioning other Taiwan brands. Sure I know almost all technology comes from China, but I try to buy computing and network devices outside of China because of opaque control of the CCP. Sure I might have a “tin foil hat” view on cyber-security, so you do you if you don’t agree. But glad QNAP is an option over building my own NAS which probably wouldn’t be as robust and power saving as a purposed built system.
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My concern is future proofing what I already have.
I have a DS1821+ with 1 x DX517. Should I invest in a second DX517 and say a E10G30-T2 (dual RJ45 10 Gigabit).
I want to preserve the “non Synology” disk support but am concerned about being orphaned by a future version of DSM.
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In 2016, I picked up my first Qnap. It streamlined the operations considerably. A few years later I upgraded to the 6 bay Qnap TS-673, and I maxed it out in terms of hardware (10gbe, 2 fast cache drives, etc.). Several years later, my 10gbe card stopped working, then 2 ports, then another port, but since I was outside of warranty, there wasn’t much I could do. Recently I added a 2×2.5Gbe card and it works, but soon after I lost my last 1gbe port. I had 2 spare computers, so I tried Truenas on them, but found the motherboard wasn’t supported, and I haven’t tried Unraid on them. I also picked up the Asustor FS6706T, I like the simplicity of the software to get it set up, but I still stumble along on my TS-673.
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Those flashing screens gave me a headache, but otherwise good overview of alternatives
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Looking for something else to replace my synology nas’s with in the future.
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Thanks for the video. Very helpful. My Synology hardware is not that old yet and it works great. But, when it comes time for an upgrade I will probably go with TrueNAS. In deciding, snapshot replication and backup software are musts.
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I’ve said this for quite a while: Anyone who put their money into this, just feeds the bully. Nearly none of the blocked features have anything to do with “hard drive compatibility”. You might need compatibility if you want to update the firmware on the drive, but really, who has updated the firmware on their drives recently?
Plus, all these crazy features in today’s NAS world are utterly bonkers. Who in their right mind runs basically random containers on the most precious piece of hardware, where all their personal or professional data is stored? I find that quite crazy. But okay, I guess I’m quite alone with that particular opinion. I personally prefer properly segregated hardware with access control in my personal network.
The only thing I’m missing on my new NAS is a NUT client and that can be mitigated. The old DS720+ with extension unit is relegated to second level backup for new new-fangled SSD NAS that has 10Gbit built in, was half the price and works quite well as just a NAS. And since it doesn’t support any containers or other apps on the host, there is no risk of it “catching the flu” either.
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Like everyone else, I loved Synology but wanted faster hardware. They stopped listening to their customers. I’ve gone ugreen but don’t like their T&Cs. Next time it will probably be Ubiquiti.
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Ubiquity, if they were smart, should get on the ball and finish their NAS right now while Synology in the shitter
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For 99% of people de Ugreen software is more than enough, as a Bonus they get video transcoding that do not exist on Scamnology.
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what do ppl think about the Zettlab AI NAS?
OR
AOOSTAR WTR MAX
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Nobody mentiones the Synology Drive app. I need to access my files with a Dropbox/iCloud/OneDrive experience, and I don’t know who offers such a solution outside of Sin-ology.
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Thanks for this content, I have use DSM for 10+ years…But.. I have a question – love the Cloudsync DSM software. I made an experiment with other OS. My goal is to have bi-dir transfer between NAS and ex. Onedrive. First, I tested Asustor Demo (www) and test if this function is available – yes – but cannot test it in real. Then I testes TrueNAS scale – no 2 way – only one way. Then installed QNAP OS (virtual) and tested HBS3 and…The difference is time to react on both sides. In synology DSM, using advanced option I could set the time to check how often it checks when new file/dir is created on Onedrive side. QNAP unftounately has no visible option (probably hidden in some plugin conf) and hard set to about 1-2 minutes. So anyway I probably change to QNAP, because of several advanced settings including ZFS etc in QutTShero. What are your opinions? Thx!
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I literally just asked for this on the last video … cool.
First thought is … all the other brands that are good turnkeys, but not quite at the level of Synology, need to take this as a wake up call, and invest in their own software for the turnkey market.
They know what they need to do to be at the same level as Synology … they just need to do it. If these companies put a lot of development people on this asap, then by next year they will have software product lines robust enough to give users a viable choice to Synology and pick off their customer base.
If they don’t, then its on them. Lost opportunity at a moment in the retail NAS market that does not come often; the lead manufacturer make such a disastrous decision, that the door is open to step up in market share.
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Robbie is still trying (and failing) to promote Synology on their software alone, it’s not the be all and end all of OS’s and I wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing on their agenda is a paid subscription to use DSM.
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What do you think of Hex OS ?
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I hope it’ll help other brands to improve their software!
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I agree with your conclusion entirely. Ever since the hardware specs of their “new” models was released I’ve been migrating as many docker containers, VMs and apps away to a mini-PC. Unless they verify some third party HDDs (have they locked out RAM too), my next NAS won’t be Synology but I will keep it as a backup destination and to run any apps I still need, like ABB, until I find a suitable alternative. I’ll mount the new NAS as an SMB share on the Synology if required.
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Synology may have an advantage in the software, especially for the more advanced/small business users. But the honest truth is that with their current path it’s very likely that those features eventually will be paid for apps.. IF they don’t just kill them like they have done with other packages. Qnap on the other hand, are still actively investing in the core apps and it is reasonable to expect them to eventually surpass Synology software.. fingers crossed.
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Ubiquiti UNAS Pro FTW (with unraid for containers and stuff)
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I’ve been using Qnap for the last year. For me it’s perfect. No complaints. The OS looks like Android, adding functionality is app based. The app store(Quts Hero) has the essential apps. There are good repositories that we can add. There is also Container Station with all kinds of apps to run. The hardware is nice.. with graphics card support. H264,h265, Av1 codec support. Nothing for me to complaint.
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8:03
Stop the racism ????
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Synology is no longer any competition lol, they killed them self over 10 years ago
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TrueNAS take i think is a bit misguided. It’s not a desktop like experience which I think some folks find scary. However with apps, data protection features etc the current UI even for someone new I think would be able to just get it.
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To sum it up:
Software-wise there are two choices:
1. Synolgy DSM
2. All the rest
Hardware-wise there are two choices
1. Customer-oriented brands with up-to-date hardware
2. Synology
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I have a hard feeling that you promote Synology despite their rip-off practices. They have no features that others don’t provide. They don’t even have a single thunderbolt NAS product.
1522+ marketing in 2025 is just both HILARIOUS AND INSANE boasting “Over 736/796 MB/s sequential read/write”. WOW in 2019 there was a NAS from QNAP which was cheaper and allowed sequential write speeds exceeding 3000+ MB/s.
By the way QNAP and Synology, I believe ASUStor is no different, so they use OS that is located on the USB-stick, just this stick called DOM is slightly different as it uses usb pins on mb for an external port but it doesn’t matter and still is a usb. Also you mentioned QNAP had accidents with ransomware, it did, but Synology had it almost the same way, as they both use Debian Linux as the core for their OSes. So software-wise they’re not so different. Just Synology for twice the price offers 700+ MB/s of sequential, which is complete garbage for windows 2000/xp times. Now add mediocre (Toshiba) Synology-rebranded hdds to that and you get the whole picture.
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Synology being number 1 for so long has become complacement, the hardware is 5 years behind the curve and the software although extensive is just stagnant.
They are resting on their laurels and in the long term will regret it.
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Just got a UGreen 6800 pro. Really easy to use, great hardware and impressive how fast they are building up their eco system. Sure Synology is still ahead simply because they’ve been in the game so long. But it’s only a matter of time before the others catch up. Synology’s reputation is sinking almost as fast as Adobe.
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Just moved from my Synology to Truenas with a topton motherboard, have more software running like Immich and Pihole to extend my homelab.
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Everyone with autism and ocd gasping at the uGreen drive numbers! ????????
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So, what os the best way to transfer data from one NAS brand to another?
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All OS sucks compared
with DSM, so sadly I stay on Synology.
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I really don’t understand why anyone is even thinking about Synology based on software with their hard limits on hardware and now hard disks. The scaremongering in this video is quite hilarious really. Software is being improved every day of the year and updated regularly. Hardware… can NOT be improved without paying extra. The ONLY SINGLE time anyone should look at synology is if they are planning multicam surveillance system. All others users should pretty much pick any other brand that can and WILL offer pretty much same options.
I also want to remind everyone that is thinking about Synology based on software… It’s only question of TIME when they will start to charge subscription for their software. This year… next year… or the year after that. It is coming… and everyone knows it.
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Got a Ugreen 2 bay, for testing as my first NAS. I will test the sh*t out of it for my Home use case. If it’s good enough then I will buy a bigger one. But for my usecase it seems to theoretically be a good option. We will see.
I wanted a 925+ originally but I’m glad I waited… No thank you with all the HDDs lockdowns.
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Terramaster in my own experience…Support is awful, after guarantee support? none existent, They were going to try charge me 60£ for an 80mm replacement fan and refused to supply me with a pinout diagram so i could fit my own. Plus not to mention the price of their RAM, you cant use any other different ram (with TOS) but their own branded ram ( in some cases 70%+) dearer than any equivalent. Although the hardware is just ok their TOS software leaves a lot to be desired.
Im using TrueNas on my T6-423 so i can use other branded RAM, Im about to get the circuit tester out real soon so i can figure out the pinout layout for a noctua fan, I dont miss TOS one bit its slow and sometimes becomes unresponsive under load.
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Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m totally done with Synology, so I’m going to skip all videos related to Synology.
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Asustor Gen2+ sounds interesting, it might hit the Goldilocks spot between Asustor Lockerstor 4 bay Gen2 and Gen3.
The difficulty of expanding RAM of Gen2 is holding me back.
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How about updates/upgrades. Does anyone know how long products from Terramaster, Ugreen (probably tough to say at the moment) or Asustor get upgrades for the OS? For myself it’s not that important as I might just put an other OS on it, but I am looking for a replacement for my parents extremely old NAS now that one of the drives is failing and am leaning towards either Terramaster or Ugreen, but couldn’t immediately find how long they tend to get updates for. I know for Synology it’s quite a long time but I have had systems in past that passed that date (including that old NAS they are using, which is an other reason why it really has to go), which is what prompted this. The longer the support, the better in this case because they will probably never grow out of it performance wise since it basically only serves files.
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DSM may be the leader in SOFTWARE took them 20+ years. but it’s only a matter of time till UGreen catches up as they’ve only been in it for a few years. Soon they will lead and innovate.
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Anyone have an official betting line on when ABB goes to a subscription model? My guess is w/in two years.
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Seems this guy are paid by Synology, now it clear.
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Truenas does cost you in time but once learned your laughing. The big difference is you don’t have to deal with company drama and the knowledge doesn’t get discontinued over time.
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Sold my old synology ds220+ for a new terrmaster unit. finally 2.5GBE ethernet, still not available on the entry synology models..
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The most important. Synology Drive is the only app that offers true On-demand sync to replace cloud.
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cool
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Synology doesn’t look to even be a choice for my next unit. UGreen or QNAP will be my next move for home installations
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Do you know, know why sorrynoligy has done the drivething!
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Okay – good video. If you were in our shoes and “wanted” to move away from Synology, which would you pick? UGreen seems very similar to Synology in terms of base capabilities (like BTRFS, remote access, etc.) from what I have seen. The physical footprint is larger. I’m replicating across multiple NAS’s including offsite. I have an older 720+ series for Plex if I need it. I was thinking about the DS925+ but no idea when it is available in the USA. QNAP has some access limitations I can’t get around.
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How HexOs going?
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In my local market, my only choice are either Qnap or Asustor. Terramaster is supposedly available but I haven’t seen one in stock so far. I can technically import a Ugreen but it will be more expensive and warranty is going to be a hassle. DIY feels too daunting to me and Qnap’s recent reputation is putting me off, I think I am leaning switching to Asustor.
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Still running on Synology 1019 mainly because it’s a pain to migrate and I am using SHR to utilize different sized drives on the same volume.
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My way is relatively clear. Later this year i will “upgrade” my 918+ with an 923+ with the 10gbe card – faster connection is most important to me at the moment. I assume the switch will work without any problems and i will also be able to used my DX517 with the 923+. The DS620Slim i have, even though a great piece of kid imho, will be phased out. And once the 923+/DX 517 will reach it storage limits – probably in 3 -5 years (so basically when the warranty on my 923+ runs out) – i will transfer my data to another plattform. Either QNAP or (if they carry on improving the software) UGreen. DSM is still the most impressive Software package of them all, and i will miss the SHR option to be honest, but the restricting game Synology is playing for the past years and probably the future kills it for me. And if everything else fails there’s of course always the Unraid/Truenas DIY route.
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A masterpiece this video.
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I don’t really understand, the DS925 will probably not aim for the business consumers. I guess the business consumers would go with the drive lock in, but the private consumers have a hard time to go with that. Why then go with this road ahead, private consumers can have a say with business decisions and there they can have this policy, but now they will simply miss a lot of private consumers and probably loose business consumers as well in the future.
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Nothing I see replaces my good old Drobo5. Bring back Drobo !
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Abobe the base QNAP simple has very powerful hardware, and in the midrange they are simple a slam-dunk against synology. They have affordable full U.2 solutions with PCI examplayion and 16+ cores. One that is fantastic and share the CPU with sinology is the QNAP TS-h973AX 9-Bay, less than 1K in B&H, no funny volume size limits, support for 64GB of ram it has 5 3.5″ bays, 4 2.5″ bays two of them U.2 10gbe ethernet etc. They have i9 and xeon middle of the pack units with performance and storage tears. The only reason I used to recommend Synology was software, in particular for the easy to expand. With QTS hero and QTS 5+ that distinction disappears (synology is still better but QNAP is good enough). What Synology still has is the proprietary Cloud backup system. The price per byte for large installation that C2 and the integration it provides is for the most part unparalleled in the industry. The others have the issue that the company that buy them needs to be sure they are not sensitive to people knowing they are financing the CCP.
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I Hope Synology is getting a decent reaction from the market for their politics
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I just need a backplane tbh ????
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i can say Qnap has nice third-party application hardware accessories. One thing i use often on new PC and Servers is the 2.5 inch m.2 SATA SSD carrier with Raid functionality or the 2.5 inch drive cage for a standard 3.5 inch bay with build in Raid controller. both systems have s single sata port exposed and do raid internal for systems that need a reliable drive boot solution but don’t have the option for hardware raid or bios level managed software raid to have a failover boot if a drive dies or you have not enough SATA ports and your only PCIE x1 or x4 is already in use for 2.5gbit.
I have a small server running with a j5040 and this system needs its PCIE2.0 x1 for the dual 2.5gbit NIC and has no raid. So i have in one 2.5 inch bay one of those m.2 sata carrier with two 128gb drives in a Raid 1, and the other 3 bays are in use with software raid 5. i needed a Hardware Raid solution for the boot drive so this was the best and painless option i could think of.
If someone says the J5040 is slow. Yes he is, but the whole system uses only 7w to 12w and is the backbone of my whole network and needs to run 24/7 even if the power is out for hours. what happens frequently in my area about 15 to 20 times a year for 30min up to 3 hours. This system needs to be efficient as possible and a Raspberry pi is slower and less flexible and uses the same amount of power.
and those newer N100 system doesn’t have enough sata ports and enough RAM through put. So the J5040 is still the best option. the system is running at 30% the whole time.
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First, fuck Synology.
Second, why are you not pressing UGreen on software directly? YouTubers, quick to take free hardware and “review” it then on to the next shinny object.
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I love how you go on about “there are things you’re giving up by going away from Synology” (all software related of course), but what are you giving up by wanting to use non-synology drives? I saw the discussion you guys had on that, and that was largely a deal breaker… well unless you want to pay that synology sticker premium. That said, as one who isn’t going to be walking away, I was considering getting a Synology, but I can’t do that in good conscious now, so I largely won’t know what I’m missing.
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The 2-4-3-1 ordering of the drives in the Ugreen NAS drove my OCD crazy! lol!
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TrueNAS is the way to go. If you’re intimidated by it, you can buy a HexOS license to do the basic setup for you. When you outgrow HexOS, you can get straight to the real TrueNAS UI.
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Hex OS?
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I don’t understand Synology’s recent moves, and let’s not pretend it’s all flower and sunshine before that, for a long time, for perosnal user, their mobile app sucks, u need 1 app for one function each, and some of them still don’t work in the background in 2025, their businesse side is OK I guess, but not support ZFS nor more relax disk management.
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Video Suggestion:
I would love to see a video about how, “of the shelf” NAS’es handle transcoding of a 4K movie to be streamed to a 1080p smartphone. And how much of a NAS killer that is today?
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Bought a UGREEN DXP2800 to test the plattform. Impossible to install TrueNAS Core and Scale on the interal EMMC because its is configured in a very very strange way. Ubuntu, no problem. Ubuntu Setup sees 1 EMMC Drive. FreeBSD sees 3 EMMC Drives. TrueNAS Installer fails cause he cant make a partition 2. Very very strange. And still no way to go back to USGS Pro without an Image.
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@PolarRed
1 minute ago
It sucks what Synology have been doing for the past few years, but for my work NAS, when I upgrade later this year it’s going to be to a DS1825+, the stability, reliability, apps and DSM clinches it for that use case for me. For my home NAS, still undecided but even there it will be hard to leave DSM. I have more than enough tinkering with my little proxmox cluster, not sure if I really want to add a NAS to that time drain as well!
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I started moving containers from synology to a dedicated vm running on proxmox. Next step will be getung rid of synology drive. And after that my synology will be only a stupid nas and iscsi devica
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Synology is no longer any competition for anyone, no one should be buying them any more simple as that!
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Synology is an open source wrapper for all the apps they offer in their UI but think they are Apple. They have no proprietary IP. They offer less hardware for absolutely no upside to the consumer. Give the consumer a reliability benchmark based on actual data. I’ve worked in marketing and digital products. You want to upsell, increase your bottom line? then make a new shining toy, with new tricks and full integration, then sell the hell out of it to your current customer base. Instead, they go the route of reducing features and crippling current products to force customers who might not have the technical knowledge to pledge their data to a company who has shown isn’t to be trusted. I for one has built PCs since the 486 days so it isn’t a big deal but I feel for those heavily invested and rely on this brand.
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I would suggest buying the 2025 synology models, try it for yourself. If it doesn’t work out then just return it.
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Sorry, $camology is still dead to me.????
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what about a real story for a change: the d e p o p u l a t i o n
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I tried doing the intro of UGreen, but felt their launch was too messed up so I gave up my reservation
I gave up on Synology after this latest fiasco, and went with a Terramaster F6-424 Max. Pretty happy so far
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Synology is a dead product, they killed all good will with their clients.
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My experience:
Synology DSX918+ NAS: Reliable, good software and utilities. Sad 1Gbit LAN limitation. Proprietary storage future.
Asustor FS6706T NAS: NVMe! 2.5Gbit LAN. 🙂 Network connection failures on large data writes to NAS, bad support, limited software compared to Synology
I’m not buying from either one of them again. QNAP, UGREEN and building custom with TrueNAS are my short list now.
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The only thing holding me back from switching from my old 1812+ is the hybrid raid. at the moment very few nas offers it.
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Goodbye forever Synology, you are the Apple in the NAS world..
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It boils down to the software and security that counts. Until the Synology’s competitors catch up, I can not make the switch.
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Businesses that have been relying on Synology will find it harder to leave the ecosystem for other brands than home users. That’s possibly the reasoning Synology took as well when they decide to use their own branded hard disks
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Just picked up Ugreen 4800 Plus. I am like it thus far. Great hardware and specs. The UGOS is VERY similar to Synology and improvements are coming out it is getting better and better. I will continue to use it. I can always install truenas or unraid if need be. But so far I dont “need”. And I am coming from a 2 Bay Synology I have been running for the 7+ years.
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Last 3 NAS have all been Synology. ( upgrade not failures). Unlikely to be a number 4 due to the Drive lock downs. What a joke!
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Thanks for this comprehensive video! Noob here, had a question about UGREEN. Is it a problem that it doesn’t have ECC memory? I’m a videographer and intending on archiving client projects for over 4 years, and edit off of my NAS every once a while. Is ECC a security feature I need for long term?
Thinking about getting the QNAP TS-673A because of that.
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I finally upgraded my DS918+ to a Ugreen NAS and I gotta say I’m very very impressed with UGOS, especially for someone who just hosts a few docker containers.
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