I'm in the market for my first NAS. Synology made the choice a bit easier.
Thank you.
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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You picked an excellent time (in terms of consumer choice on NAS's). I've been using a DS920+ for the past few years, and the software is solid (e.g. the core apps like Drive, Photos, etc). Synology is (was?) also always number one in terms of security. But honestly, there's little to no reason to expose your NAS to the internet these days since tools like Tailscale make life a lot easier (and safer).
That being said, I also was a beta tester for Ugreen's NAS(es) last year. Their software sucked at the time, but it's gotten way better. The hardware itself is gorgeous, and they don't skimp on parts. The one I have is one they never intended to sell in the US: DX4700 (they sell the DXP4800). This one has an Intel N5105 (predecessor to the N100), 8GB RAM, and dual NVME slots (for cache or for storage). Plus they listened to us testers when we told them to allow third party OS installs without voiding the warranty (e.g. OpenMediaVault, etc).
Point is, no matter who you go with or if you build your own, it's a good time (minus tarrifs).
Thanks for your answer. Om considering the DXP4800. I'm forced to buy one soon because my drives on the desktop are soon full.
Hmmm so you're telling me to go with Ugreen, got it
This sounds like the company from Cory Doctorow’s most recent novel, Picks & Shovels
Hold up. Let me get this straight - Synology is trying to make their NASs only work with their own proprietary hard drives? Do they not realize that there are boat loads of other companies out there making NASs and Hard Drives?
Who the hell is going to want to buy a Synology NAS now? Ffs, some of these companies are so delusional...
It’s one of those really myopic decisions that sink companies. But god bless em, they just keep trying lol
Short term profits reign king once again
Gotta make the imaginary money line go up somehow
Is there a reason to think all the other companies couldn't start doing it to?
This sucks as a long time Synology customer. They really should know their audience better.
Oh well. Back to proxmox to handle everything
Broadcom released a free VMware again, Synology is locking down their products,... Did Synology just hire some brain dead Broadcom executive?
This is seriously 'how to kill your brand and customer good will in one easy step' type nonsense.
Synology does not have the respect in Enterprise that someone like Dell or HPE does. They exist in Enterprise because of admins who use it at home and then bring the knowledge to work.
All this does is make sure nobody will buy one for the home anymore. There are too many other good options. And various open source NAS OS choices becoming more mature by the day.
If I was an OEM like Beelink or Servermicro I would be rushing to make an unbranded storage box, five or six 3.5 in SATA hot swap bays in front, 2-4 NVMe ports on the bottom, decent low power CPU, and an SODIMM socket or two. They'd sell a ton of them.
I also wouldn't be surprised if a Synology 'jailbreak' to load a third party OS comes out.
Did Synology just hire some brain dead Broadcom executive?
Well, Citrix's CEO was Broadcom' software boss
And also hasa place at the US treasury, he's DOGE-affiliated as well: https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2025/citrix-parent-ceo-krause-on-doge-role-we-re-applying-public-company-standards-to-the-federal-government
My employer uses Citrix to run our proprietary apps. Every "upgrade" they issued just made it worse to the point that it was crashing multiple times and day. Since we're a 25/7 operation we had to have IT on standby all the time to reboot the servers every time they crashed. Citrix support said there was nothing in the logs other than the crashes so it must be our brand new hardware.
It got so bad that corporate paid the IT team extra to build a web based version as a backup. It's slower than Citrix but at least when Citrix crashes we have a fallback that works.
Thankfully corporate has given the green light for a custom built system, so now we're all just waiting for the corporate machine to go through the bidding process so we can start working with whoever they pick.
QNAP, Asustor, UGreen, Unifi, and many others already offer lower cost NASes from 2 to 8 bays (some might offer even more)
Oh tons of alternatives for sure. Where I'm at, at this point if I go somewhere else I'm going to want open source most likely.
If I was an OEM like Beelink or Servermicro I would be rushing to make an unbranded storage box, five or six 3.5 in SATA hot swap bays in front, 2-4 NVMe ports on the bottom, decent low power CPU, and an SODIMM socket or two. They'd sell a ton of them.
There's no shortage of alternatives to Synology hardware. People buy Synology because of the software.
Tons of alternatives from other NAS vendors, but I'm not sure anyone makes a Synology type box that is a generic x86 to run your own OS. Plenty of tower server type things but I'm not aware of any little toaster type boxes.
Lots of companies do. Or at the very least they make them to where you can install whatever you want yourself.
Well,
Broadcom released a free VMware again
should be taken as a bait to lure in unsuspecting users before later stage enshit tactics happen. Synology seems to be at some other point in their enshit process, but enshit nevertheless.
Oh absolutely. Without a doubt. Broadcom / VMware have lost trust for good
Hey, that's not entirely true! Our place brought them in because it was also a cheap solution! Honestly, it has done fine for our storage solution, which is mostly backups related. Then again, we came from Baracuda, which was super expensive, super locked down, and did break a lot.
Even if the drive prices are not raised to unreasonable levels, if ever Synology decides to stop selling these drives the NAS you have purchased will become useless. Think I'll pass.
It doesn't become useless, it just misses out on a bunch of useful features for the drives.
Still ridiculous, of course
Well shit… I don’t even think about that.
This is the silliest thing I've ever heard, do they even know their audience.
So glad I went with asustor. Synology lost their god damned minds
Fixed
Worked-around, you mean. And that hack seems temporary.
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I switched from a HP MicroServer with TrueNAS (the BSD one) to a Synology 8-bay system because of convenience, mostly (DIY 8-bay with hot swap, low idle power and all seems hard to come by).
Hopefully it'll last for years to come but if I ever need to replace/upgrade it it's not gonna be another Synology with this type of extreme vendor lock-in.
That is sad to see. I’ve moved on to Raspberry Pi + hard disk enclosure (with incredible performance) but it’s still upsetting to see Synology go this route.
One point: if it matters to you, you might want to confirm your enclosure's behavior under power-loss conditions. I had one that did not come back to a powered on state or have an option to do so when power was restored. Not something I'd thought of, since I'd assumed this behavior. Eventually, after some looking, found an enclosure with a mechanical-toggle power switch that did restore prior state.
It does matter to me and I live in an area with frequent power outages. Unfortunately I didn’t check this out before purchasing so I’m pretty annoyed by this behavior.
Yeah, sucks. :-/
For anyone else in the same boat, let me go see what that enclosure is with a physical power button that I wound up ultimately getting.
goes to look
This:
https://www.amazon.com/Swapable-External-Enclosure-Support-Capacity/dp/B0DCDDGHMJ
Probably others one can find
just an 8-bay JBOD enclosure with a variable speed fan and physical power switch.
But unlike the non-powering-on-after-power-loss enclosures, I haven't had problems with it.
I have a ton of USB devices, and drive enclosures
the one thing that I really do not want to stay offline
are the only thing I've ever seen that doesn't power up again on power loss. Maybe there are some USB displays that might also do so, but I don't care about that if I'm not physically present.
For that price I might as well get a used desktop or another mini PC.
I bought a Terramaster instead. Better hardware specs for the money and you can overwrite the OS with Linux which is way better than any stock OS.
This is what I’ll replace my DS415+ with, too, once it dies. The TerraMasters are basically bog-standard Intel NUCs with a storage adapter. And there’s HDMI output and an internal USB drive which you can just replace (or overwrite) and install OMV or TrueNAS or whatever.
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I have an Asustor that is running Debian. It's just a PC in a NAS enclosure so why should it not.
That's all a NAS has ever been, just a PC that specializes in storage. "NAS" isn't a specific product, either - it's whatever hardware you set up to function as such. My own NAS is a 2014 Mac mini running OMV (Debian 12 based) with a 4-bay locking drive dock attached to it. Works great.
I took images of my gaming PC drives (500GB, 2TB) onto a 4TB spinner, then shoved that spinner into my NAS's dock. With 2 minutes of point and click configuration, I can access those images from my gaming PC's new Linux install over the network to copy whatever data I might need. Easy peasy. No Synology needed for that.
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