I’ve been a Synology fan for many years. I used to roll my own NAS servers for home, but eventually decided that quieter, more energy-friendly dedicated NAS solutions were a better path forward. I don’t use a lot of their on-board apps, just basic file storage.
Right now I’ve got a DS920, a DS418, and a DS1522…but I probably won’t be buying another Synology again.
Why?
Their abusive, customer-hostile policies.
Samba Limits
I started getting queasy when I read earlier this year that on some models, they limit how many concurrent connections you can make. I though this was just something setup by default in smb.conf, but in fact Synology has a proprietary wrapper around the daemon that artificially limits it.
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
You Must Buy Your Hard Drives From Us
For a long time, Synology has only officially supported certain hard drives. I don’t have a problem with this, for three reasons. First, it was a pretty extensive list and included all the major players (WD, Seagate, etc.). Second, it’s unreasonable to expect Synology to certify every single hard drive from every maker on the planet. And finally, it was just a support limit. In other words, you could use whatever hard drives you wanted, but if there was a problem, they wouldn’t be able to support you if the drive wasn’t on their list.
I could live with that. What I can’t live with is the new policy, implemented this year, where you must buy your drives from Synology. This only affects new models from this year forward. Details still seem sketchy, but rumor is that it’s going to be along the lines of “we don’t recognize your WD Black hard drive, therefore we won’t use it.”
And by the way, Synology’s hard drives aren’t all that great. My WD Blacks come with a 5 year warranty. Synology’s only come with 3 years.
Golf. Foxtrot. Yankee.
Where to Now?
I could go back to building my own, with TrueNAS. In the past, my home-build NAS boxes were hand-me-down gaming PCs (because they were big enough towers) but I have to imagine one can find a case that allows tons of drives and is still powered by something modest.
Or I may look at UGREEN. Or Buffalo. Or someone else.
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Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.