Synology requires self-branded drives for some consumer NAS systems, drops full functionality and support for third-party HDDs

www.tomshardware.com

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/36614306

Are your files going to be safer with Synology hard drives?

Technology @lemmy.zip

BrikoX @lemmy.zip

1w ago

Synology requires self-branded drives for some consumer NAS systems, drops full functionality and support for third-party HDDs

www.tomshardware.com /pc-components/nas/synology-requires-self-branded-drives-for-some-consumer-nas-systems-drops-full-functionality-and-support-for-third-party-hdds

Hardware @lemmy.world

Alphane Moon @lemmy.world

1w ago

Synology requires self-branded drives for some consumer NAS systems, drops full functionality and support for third-party HDDs

www.tomshardware.com /pc-components/nas/synology-requires-self-branded-drives-for-some-consumer-nas-systems-drops-full-functionality-and-support-for-third-party-hdds

12 comments

hp printer model for a nas, what a wonderful world we live in.

As usual, redditors can’t read the thing they linked to.
While you can still use non-supported drives for storage, Hardwareluxx [machine translated] reports that you’ll lose several critical functions, including estimated hard drive health reports, volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analyses, and automatic firmware updates.
So the headline is false, you just don’t get access to a bunch of functionality that relies on drives predictably reporting to the host and being specific types.
Oh, and it only applies to the “plus” line.
I don’t even like synology and this is pretty indefensible writing…
Tbh it probably reflects coming shake up in storage where hybrid devices and race to the bottom thinking take over.
- Health reports are already on the derives you should use for a nas. It's called S.M.A.R.T data and its an industry standard. They're just going to prevent you from reading that data unless the HDD has some finger print from them.
  
  Man the more I read about this the more I’m on synologys side.
  I remember smart being only as reliable as the last set of hands it passed through, but there was a reselling scam going on where people would reset the smart data of seagate drives. It got detected because those drives have their own proprietary, possibly read only store of usage data.
  The same thing could be going on with other manufacturers but we dont know because either they don’t have that or their unique mshrs in smart are getting cleared.
  So smart can’t tell you if there’s been supply chain attack on your drives.
  What would a reasonable high end manufacturer of devices do? The same thing apple gets hate for: close the gates to out of channel equipment.
  As I said before, I don’t particularly like synology or use any of their shit but they really seem to be the good guys here. If it was some bottom of the barrel AOMII (iirc aomii makes decent shit, it’s just an example) doodad I would understand the upset, but these are the people you pay to not have to actually understand networking or linux.
  I do think it’s looking grim for affordable storage once again. Spinning drives are losing their applicability in industry as flash prices fall and expectations rise. We’re probably at peak quality and reliability for these things and they’re likely to get worse out of the box as time goes on.

I personally run TrueNAS Community edition on second-hand hardware and a bunch of drives. Corporations dump hardware all the time and it can be scooped up for cheap. The newer editions can run an optional Kubernetes instance, which lets you use Docker for any services you might want to run on top. I highly recommend it.
- Where buy ex corporate hardware (ideally aus, but intl shipping ok)? I only know where to find drives. Have been meaning to build a NAS but am financially restrained.
  
  eBay or Facebook marketplace usually
  
  I usually browse craigslist, but in larger cities there are usually companies that handle warehousing and selling of old hardware when company IT does a full office upgrade. FWIW, I use old workstation hardware because it is usually less finicky and power hungry than rack hardware.
  
  I'm a little out of the loop, but a few years ago a lot of ex-corp stuff tended to get dumped on Gray's. Might be worth a look but I have no idea how enshittified it is these days.

Glad I rolled my own server solution with network storage rather then buying into this. Also does transcoding a lot, lot faster than these. Admittedly would love to find some way to have a working SLC cache for serving files but oh well. Access times haven't been a problem.

huh. for a moment I entertained the idea of getting one of these, but decided against it in favor of a more bespoke and adaptable solution.

I've had an 8-bay Synology for ten years and I'm so glad to be finally ditching it. It's gotten really slow and the kernel hasn't been updated in like twenty years. I've learned enough about Linux to just build my own, so I did that.

12 comments