This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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...
Is there a reason to think all the other companies couldn't start doing it to?
because tons and tons of potential solutions exist. At the core of this class of product is a very simple computer that costs next to nothing. FOSS software exists to accomplish the same goal and for minimal cost someone can compete with them.
Synology doesn't really control anything. In the enterprise segment they tend to be tiny little offerings that are on the small end of SMB. Their bigger bulkier enterprise stuff is easily overshadowed by any real enterprise offering from a larger hardware company, though i've seen some exist even in larger orgs but it's not because something else couldn't have done the job.
Anyone starting fresh has to do some work to catch up but it really depends on the use case. Basic NAS/DAS functions are so trivial.
I'm in the market for my first NAS. Synology made the choice a bit easier.
Thank you.
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).
Hmmm so you're telling me to go with Ugreen, got it
Thanks for your answer. Om considering the DXP4800. I'm forced to buy one soon because my drives on the desktop are soon full.
This sucks as a long time Synology customer. They really should know their audience better.
Oh well. Back to proxmox to handle everything
My switch to Unraid is feeling better every day 😀
built, not bought.
So glad I went with asustor. Synology lost their god damned minds
This sounds like the company from Cory Doctorow’s most recent novel, Picks & Shovels
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.
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.
You can buy a NAS case, get a cheap matx or itx motherboard and roll your own with ease. Where exactly have you looked?
Here's one such case: https://a.co/d/eUz87Mh
Yeah I actually hadn't seen that at all. There's not many of those toaster style NAS cases, that one is fairly big as it needs a full size power supply. What I have in mind though is basically same size and form factor as a Synology DS9xx, 4-6 3.5" bays, main board under or off to the side, 1-2 NVMe slots, low power CPU. Basically clone a Synology DS9xx but put a standard UEFI BIOS on it as well as a video output. I think that would sell pretty well. Especially if you gave it 10 gig ethernet and a CPU that had an AI accelerator.
Could of course build the thing yourself, but it ends up bigger.
Lots of companies do. Or at the very least they make them to where you can install whatever you want yourself.
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.
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 24/7 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.
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.
Well shit… I don’t even think about that.
This is the silliest thing I've ever heard, do they even know their audience.
Fixed
Worked-around, you mean. And that hack seems temporary.
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.
