I was looking at simple 2 bay home NAS and Synology was - quite logically - one of the contenders. Now I'm glad I ordered differently. Went with Asustor AS5402, which might be not as polished package as a Synology option, but they're very open about it and say it's just regular PC so you can instal e.g. TrueNAS if you want. This openness convinced me.
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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Synology is made for the tech literate tech idiot.
They solve one problem and create a dozen more. That problem not only doesn't need a physical solution, it doesn't need to be a standalone device. It doesn't need its own shitty proprietary operating system.
Anyways. Fuck them.
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That's a massive shot in the foot.
As a Synology owner, I already had enough - they have arbitrarily cut customer support to sanctioned jurisdictions, leaving me without the support they promised and I expected when paying for a device.
Next one will definitely be built from the ground up.
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I get why they do this sort of thing but it didn't stop us re-adding video station and h265 support back into our Synos.
Someone already made a script to overwrite the existing compatible drive checker so someone will write a new script to fix the new one.
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Critical Synology Vulnerability Let Attackers Remote Execute Arbitrary Code
Just build your own. It's easy. Move on.
This will not end well for them.
I had been considering upgrading, my current 4 bay Synology is physically full and running out of storage space. Moving that to a larger Synology box and adding drives would be easiest, basically plug and play.
But now instead I'll probably just switch to a more traditional NAS instead. Run TrueNAS, or maybe give HexOS a look. If I'm going to have to convert from my current proprietary Synology filesystem anyway I might as well rebuild from scratch. As it is I've shifted all the services off the Synology and Docker to a dedicated Proxmox box.
Once my DS415+ (with the C2000 fix) finally dies, I’ll most probably go with a Terramaster F4-423. They have an internal USB-port with their OS which you can replace and install a custom OS to it. And it’s basically just an Intel NUC with a storage controller in a nice package. So, pretty much compatible with the usual OSes and NAS softwares.
Grab one of the 8 bays now, this won't affect anything currently released. I don't see me having to retire my 1813+ or 1819+ (both 8bay) anytime soon and both are 4+ years old without a hiccup.
Why bother with that? That's gonna be $1000 just for the box alone, and still lock me into the Synology ecosystem.
I can build a NAS with more capability for less than that. Like taking a Jonsbo NAS case and have the freedom to do whatever I want with it, with plenty of space to move everything else I'm running over to that as well. Even their N5 would likely be less expensive, and I'd have room for 12 HDDs and 4 SSDs then.
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Died 1990s, born 2025 - welcome back Mac hard drive firmware lockdowns
Welp, guess I definitely won't be buying synology again in the future. I was planning to transition to a rackmounted NAS at some point and synology is overpriced in that category anyway but this puts the final nail in for me.
It's a shame because I quite liked the simplicity of their UI.
Lmao what is Synology smoking. I have used their hardware in the past, now I'm so glad that I chose a Nextcloud setup for my home storage solution.
Also why does the nonsense reasoning for these limitations always include "security". That's a rhetorical question btw, I know they are just making shit up.
This comment by Frodo Douchebaggins in the Ars Technica comments sums up my newfound disrespect for Synology pretty well:
Suck a turd, you enshittifying sons of bitches.
I remember arguing with some nerd that this overpriced shit was not fucking worth it and my build based on old server parts I got from a local computer recycler was infinitely superior in every way
I wish I saved that post so I could reply with this link. I feel so validated. Never trust companies. It’s why I say you should never fuck with plex, even if it is a bit easier to deploy than Jellyfin.
Yeah... Never had a specific "server" certified hardware and always repurpose my hold hardware stuff. Never failed me !!
However, there are some functions specific to NAS' like low power and other stuff people mention but I already forgot.
IMO all this NAS and certified server stuff is good for Enterprise shit and the like... But for homelabbing it's probably overkill and way to much overpriced for the little gain...
Except maybe for the ease of use and plug and play function? Each one it's own I guess !
The only reason I even have “server” parts is because they were dirt cheap at the recycling center. Before I used this my rig was an old pc from a doctors office I worked at they were going to throw away from like 2009. It was awful spec wise but it did the job. My current build is overkill but I wanted to play with vms and local LLM stuff and the hardware was cheap, so why not?
low power is definitely something to consider though. That said there are some people that have made impressive builds out there. There are some low power builds on the unraid forums that use even less power than one of these things. It’s a bit more up front because it relies on some niche hardware but the power usage is so low it’s maybe worthwhile if you use it for years
I just fail to see the benefit of these. Ease of use for sure but assembling a pc is really not difficult and installing an OS is not hard either. And an os like unraid or truenas is pretty simple to use, they hold your hand a lot. Like I get that running Debian is something not everyone wants to do but then it’s like, just don’t do that then?
Frankly if you’re capable enough to configure the dockers you’d run on one of these, like plex or Jellyfin, I would think you could handle those things??
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The enshittification/rent seeking continues. Nothing is sacred.
If I had known how bad it'd get I would've chosen a different field to work in. Sure, I can avoid it in my private life but on the job it's like I'm in some kind of hostage situation.
"Oh hi there customer! You know our product your users are accustomed to will only come as a subscription from now on and it'll also be really bad and force full screen ads. We'll push two updates per day because our unpaid interns are so agile. Bugs? Oh, no, we call those 'micro disruptions'. They're a feature but don't cost extra! How much the license costs? Well, how much do you have? Yes, it'll be that much."
It’s like they don’t understand their demographic.
They absolutely do. But it's a symptom of capitalism. They must seek higher and higher profits each year. And this is one of their ideas to seek higher profits....
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Yeah, I think their CEO might have QNAP stock or something.
It's hilarious how dumb this is.
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Fuuuck that