HOLY F*CK, has hell frozen over!!?

Synology finally joins the 2.5Gbe networking club on a consumer-tier device with SSD support?
Welcome to ~2018, Synology; Better late than never....

Now we've cleared that old gigabit networking hurdle that everyone else cleared half a decade ago, can we please have an adult conversation about the "Synology-branded drive" vendor-lock that makes us pay more than double the market rate for Toshiba N300 NAS drives with your stickers on them?

Ah, what do I care? I grew tired of waiting for Synology to act in the interest of its own customers and jumped ship a couple of years ago. I still have a DS220J kicking around but it's anaemic, slow, and had pitiful spec for the money even when it was new. The grass truly is greener elsewhere....

Don't get so excited, it only has one 2.5GbE out of the two ports. The other is still 1GbE.

They lost me after the branded drives BS and the removal of the expansion slot in the 925+.

they can keep their crap.

Next round, I will either go with Ugreen or TrueNAS.

Neo_MorpheusThey lost me after the branded drives BS and the removal of the expansion slot in the 925+.

they can keep their crap.

Next round, I will either go with Ugreen or TrueNAS.

Using my first Ugreen at the moment. Core functionality is good if you just want solid hardware and shares/backups.
App support is worse, as you'd expect from a younger, less-established OS.

TrueNAS is the opposite of that. Roll your own jank, expect to do some troubleshooting before it all works properly, but it's flexible as all heck; Less of a NAS, more of a general-purpose server.

Yeah, I'm currently on a DS918+ and only have some Dockers containers and Photos, plus data and Drive.

So moving to something else is doable, in the next year or so, assuming that mine doesnt die any time soon.

Chrispy_HOLY F*CK, has hell frozen over!!?

Synology finally joins the 2.5Gbe networking club on a consumer-tier device with SSD support?
Welcome to ~2018, Synology; Better late than never....

Now we've cleared that old gigabit networking hurdle that everyone else cleared half a decade ago, can we please have an adult conversation about the "Synology-branded drive" vendor-lock that makes us pay more than double the market rate for Toshiba N300 NAS drives with your stickers on them?

Ah, what do I care? I grew tired of waiting for Synology to act in the interest of its own customers and jumped ship a couple of years ago. I still have a DS220J kicking around but it's anaemic, slow, and had pitiful spec for the money even when it was new. The grass truly is greener elsewhere....

Only one of those 2 is 2.5Gbps other one is 1Gbps competition in this segment is offering 2x2.5Gbps already, its still outdated stinky turd from Synology.

ChaitanyaOnly one of those 2 is 2.5Gbps other one is 1Gbps competition in this segment is offering 2x2.5Gbps already, its still outdated stinky turd from Synology.

ymdhisDon't get so excited, it only has one 2.5GbE out of the two ports. The other is still 1GbE.

Yep, still disappointing, but we're talking about Synology here. They're now only 5 years behind the competition rather than being obsolete at launch.

Part of me wonders exactly how much money it costs Synology to make both ports 2.5GbE, and the other part of me wonders how many consumers looking for a low-end, turnkey NAS actually have a managed 2.5GbE switch with link aggregation.

Chrispy_Synology finally joins the 2.5Gbe networking club on a consumer-tier device with SSD support?
Welcome to ~2018, Synology; Better late than never....

This is meaningless. One still has to buy synology drives. You can't use anything else. DealBreakers in extremus.

lexluthermiesterThis is meaningless. One still has to buy synology drives. You can't use anything else. DealBreakers in extremus.

Yea I probably won't get any new units in the future because of this Synology drive restriction bs. Well maybe a 923+ with the Ryzen CPU because it doesn't fall under this restriction. But after that no, a total dealbreaker for me as well if I can't use locally sourced drives from WD, Seagate, or Toshiba.

A Computer GuyYea I probably won't get any new units in the future because of this Synology drive restriction bs.

Same here. boycotting them entirely going forward. Whatever their reasoning, it's foolish and I will not suffer it.

Now you can transfer data off our overpriced drives faster than before.... Woo.

I do like DSM, but it's not even close enough to a reason to hold me into the ecosystem.

Terramaster T12 next for me (same price as a DS18xx+) more or less but with a more powerful cpu, better connectivity, 12 bays. I only run a couple of docker based clients (pihole and a torrent client for seeding some Amiga stuff) so I am golden.

lexluthermiesterThis is meaningless. One still has to buy synology drives. You can't use anything else. DealBreakers in extremus.

Ah yes, this is a 2025 model that is completely blocked, isn't it.

Not just a blight of yellow warning triangles, Synology just full-on flip you the bird if you try to use a hard disk that isn't theirs in the NAS you bought.

I really hope synology tanks in the consumer/prosumer/SMB space. It's such an anti-consumer move and it's absolutely destroyed the tiny shred of goodwill people might still have been clinging onto.

Chrispy_Ah yes, this is a 2025 model that is completely blocked, isn't it.

Sadly, yes. Before they started doing this, their products were top tier. This one choice ruined them. Just unacceptable.

All of their excuses for forcing the use of their own drives were pretty pathetic and on thin ice even for their prosumer/small business models - ie those with enough bays to support parity-based RAID configurations, and with enough CPU/networking throughput to actually support multiple power users at one.

nascompares.com/news/synology-explain-why-they-changed-drive-support-and-verification-in-2025-nas/

Those poor excuses for drive restrictions completely fall apart for two-bay consumer NAS boxes like the 225+

[INDENT]Issues during RAID rebuild? [/INDENT]
[INDENT]What RAID rebuild?! There are only two bays so it's either a mirror or a stripe, no parity options exist.[/INDENT]
[INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT]Compatibility problems?[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Uh, it's a hard drive. If Synology's AHCI is so bad that it can't work with industry-standard SATA drives, then that's Synology's problem and it reflects poorly on them.[/INDENT]
[INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT]Performance Issues? [/INDENT]
[INDENT]"Unverified drives may function under light workloads but can suffer serious performance drops (e.g., IOPS decline) under multi-user access" is not relevant to the 225+ It's a consumer device for use at home. User concurrency is likely to be "2" at most.[/INDENT]

The only logical reasons remaining for this vendor-lock in the 1-and-2-bay models are "Synology are too lazy or incompetent to do compatibility testing and fix issues with their SATA controllers" and "Synology are just cashing in on their brand name and taking advantage of gullible/ignorant people as they intentionally exit the consumer space". It's nothing short of brand suicide, so one has to guess that they're not interested in offering consumer devices going forwards.

Chrispy_Performance Issues?
[INDENT]"Unverified drives may function under light workloads but can suffer serious performance drops (e.g., IOPS decline) under multi-user access" is not relevant to the 225+ It's a consumer device for use at home. User concurrency is likely to be "2" at most.[/INDENT]

It's pure farce since their 'verified' drives are rebadged Toshi's

BagerklestyneIt's pure farce since their 'verified' drives are rebadged Toshi's

The brand of drives used isn't the issue, it's the lack of consumer choice and user rights. It's a very serious problem.

Thank

lexluthermiesterThe brand of drives used isn't the issue, it's the lack of consumer choice and user rights. It's a very serious problem.

Thankfully consumers have the choice and the right to not buy anything from Synology ever again.

Chrispy_The only logical reasons remaining for this vendor-lock in the 1-and-2-bay models are "Synology are too lazy or incompetent to do compatibility testing and fix issues with their SATA controllers" and "Synology are just cashing in on their brand name and taking advantage of gullible/ignorant people as they intentionally exit the consumer space". It's nothing short of brand suicide, so one has to guess that they're not interested in offering consumer devices going forwards.

I hate what I'm about to write because it is a pro synology excuse.

That said, the theory is that since people like us buy a NAS from them one per maybe 7 or so years and pay absolutely nothing in between units, they are doing the drives thing to collect some more money to survive.

Its a theory mind you, but still, I can see why they are doing it.

Now, it doesnt excuse their prices for the now obsolete hardware that they are selling.

lexluthermiesterThe brand of drives used isn't the issue, it's the lack of consumer choice and user rights. It's a very serious problem.

I know, the point is they don't make their own so all they're doing is a custom firmware.

I'm not supporting them, I have a DS1815+ and a DS1821+ and I am getting a terramaster T12 for my next unit.

What I was saying is a farce is their 'verified' drives are made by someone else.

Remember they used to latch onto Ironwolf drives for a while with the 'it' choice waffle for Syno. mumblefk mumblefk *drive health crap* mumblefk

There are way to circumvent it for the most part, but you shouldn't need to. At all.

I imagine it's all calculated from Synology.

Consumer side has falling revenue anyway, so hard drive lock in and extremely high drive prices for larger sizes will simply decimate the consumer sector, enable Synology to focus on the side with rising revenue, server and other large business options.

global.synologydownload.com/download/Document/Hardware/DataSheet/DiskStation/25-year/DS925%2B/enu/Synology_DS925%2B_Data_Sheet_enu.pdf

Ive got 3x RS815+. They blocked DSM upgrades on this model even though they allow updates on later year DS and RS models that HAVE THE SAME PROCESSOR. If i had the new DSM that manages containers better, i might be sufficiently impressed to buy a newer bigger RS. But now with the drive lock-in i'm not interested until they remove that restriction. Another customer lost. Another "you sell by reputation and recommendation" lost.

Chrispy_All of their excuses for forcing the use of their own drives were pretty pathetic and on thin ice even for their prosumer/small business models - ie those with enough bays to support parity-based RAID configurations, and with enough CPU/networking throughput to actually support multiple power users at one.

nascompares.com/news/synology-explain-why-they-changed-drive-support-and-verification-in-2025-nas/

Those poor excuses for drive restrictions completely fall apart for two-bay consumer NAS boxes like the 225+

[INDENT]Issues during RAID rebuild?[/INDENT]
[INDENT]What RAID rebuild?! There are only two bays so it's either a mirror or a stripe, no parity options exist.[/INDENT]
[INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT]Compatibility problems?[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Uh, it's a hard drive. If Synology's AHCI is so bad that it can't work with industry-standard SATA drives, then that's Synology's problem and it reflects poorly on them.[/INDENT]
[INDENT][/INDENT]
[INDENT]Performance Issues? [/INDENT]
[INDENT]"Unverified drives may function under light workloads but can suffer serious performance drops (e.g., IOPS decline) under multi-user access" is not relevant to the 225+ It's a consumer device for use at home. User concurrency is likely to be "2" at most.[/INDENT]

The only logical reasons remaining for this vendor-lock in the 1-and-2-bay models are "Synology are too lazy or incompetent to do compatibility testing and fix issues with their SATA controllers" and "Synology are just cashing in on their brand name and taking advantage of gullible/ignorant people as they intentionally exit the consumer space". It's nothing short of brand suicide, so one has to guess that they're not interested in offering consumer devices going forwards.

I believe the newer 2 bay models support the expansion unit though their specific use of esata connector. That aside, from reading the article the claimed reduction in problems to me seems simply from putting more testing time on the drives before shipping it to the consumer. Another angle one could look at it from is by Synology rebranding drives it helps preventing situations like mixing CRM and SMR drives together or combining drives with mismatched performance by inexperienced users. There is no reason Synology can't offer rebranded drives by themselves (and they have) but let's face it, most do not really wants to pay the premium for it or waiting for the delay in shipping time from inadequate supply. DSM is great but being strapped by both less powerful hardware compared to the competition and restricted to specifically branded hard drives is consumer/prosumer product suicide.

A Computer GuyI believe the newer 2 bay models support the expansion unit though their specific use of esata connector. That aside, from reading the article the claimed reduction in problems to me seems simply from putting more testing time on the drives before shipping it to the consumer. Another angle one could look at it from is by Synology rebranding drives it helps preventing situations like mixing CRM and SMR drives together or combining drives with mismatched performance by inexperienced users. There is no reason Synology can't offer rebranded drives by themselves (and they have) but let's face it, most do not really wants to pay the premium for it or waiting for the delay in shipping time from inadequate supply. DSM is great but being strapped by both less powerful hardware compared to the competition and restricted to specifically branded hard drives is consumer/prosumer product suicide.

That edge-case of expanding the 2-bay NAS with expansion enclosures kinda makes sense, but there's no reason to enforce that drive restriction until an expansion unit is connected.

A Computer GuyI believe the newer 2 bay models support the expansion unit though their specific use of esata connector.

It's all 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 now. eSATA died a long time ago.

TheLostSwedeIt's all 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 now. eSATA died a long time ago.

Ahh for the 2025 models, that seems much nicer.