You can change the OS on the UGREEN NAS(s), as well. They are supported by unRaid and TrueNAS, as well as most linux distros.
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My Newbie Experience Getting Into NAS
- Thread starter drrich2
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You can change the OS on the UGREEN NAS(s), as well. They are supported by unRaid and TrueNAS, as well as most linux distros.
I have a question for all the home NAS users in here. I am still rocking my 5-bay Drobo DAS (yes, DAS) but will probably have to switch soon.
Drobo has the advantage that I can have several disk packs, like Pack A = 5 disks, Pack B = another 5 disks, and so on.
While the Drobo is powered off, I can switch all the disks, and when I turn the Drobo back on, it will recognize the new disk pack and its contents and present the data from the new pack without problems.
Is this "easy disk pack switching" possible with Synology and/or other "home" NAS systems?
Thanks!
Drobo has the advantage that I can have several disk packs, like Pack A = 5 disks, Pack B = another 5 disks, and so on.
While the Drobo is powered off, I can switch all the disks, and when I turn the Drobo back on, it will recognize the new disk pack and its contents and present the data from the new pack without problems.
Is this "easy disk pack switching" possible with Synology and/or other "home" NAS systems?
Thanks!
I built a new truenas terramaster appliance for my parents to replace their aging time capsule. However I wish I’d looked at using a Mac mini to do the same thing - it can host time capsule for you and you get the benefit of another Mac plus it sips power. Attach a few drives for redundancy and that piece is handled as well.
For the Samsung T7, you might want to look into their Activation Software to enable TRIM:
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/support/owners/product/t7-series-500gb/
I went down the iSCSI rabbit hole, inspired by this thread, a few days ago and I found that there isn't much current support for ISCSI initiators in macOS.
One point is that ZFS pool scrubbing allows you to detect an issue before it gets potentially propagated to all your backups as well (same applies to BTRFS).
Thanks for mentioning that. I don't have the specific link at hand just now, but I watched at least one YouTube video presentation discussing using a Mac Mini as a server. A user could set it up and attach some external drives, and use it to perform some functions a NAS might otherwise be used for. If anyone has their Mac (or PC) set up to do such a thing, please share what you use it for and how happy you are with it.
Yeah, however if the ZFS box is not the source of your other backups, this doesn't do much.
Rumours of their demise are premature. They‘re pivoting away from consumer products/sales to enterprise SME. Those customers care more about security and reliability than apps, flashy features and raw performance. Both of which many would rate Synology somewhat higher than their consumer-oriented competition.
Everyone interested in running „home server“ types of apps on their NAS should take. ote that that’s clearly not Synology‘s target audience anymore.
They can try, but no one is seriously considering Synology for serious enterprise workloads outside of scratch storage.
As someone who works in enterprise; I'd rather roll my own TrueNAS scale box for anything enterprise-serious than run Synology.
I have mine like 10 feet from my bed right behind my desktop (it’s sideways). The drives make some noise but they’re dramatically quieter than my pc. I don’t even notice it. I’ve also got 6 noctua industrial fans that sound like jet engines.
I backed the UGREEN on Kickstarter and got a 2800. Then realized I needed way more space and power so I got the 6800 this year to replace it. I’d been looking at other options but the performance vs cost was terrible. UGREEN really went all out and I haven’t regretted it once
I’m glad Synology stopped with that bs because their drives are way overpriced.
TBH I exclusively use thunderbolt with my Mac. Makes no sense using a usbc to Ethernet adapter or wifi because both are so incredibly slow by comparison. I want to get the msi thunderbolt card for my pc too but I haven’t done it yet. I also shelled out the ridiculous $100+ for the 6ft Apple thunderbolt 4 cable years ago when I was using an egpu to play video games on boot camp.
I loaded my synology ram with whatever brand I bought on Amazon. It works fine.
Edit: it was Samsung DDR4
My 6800 has dual 10gbE ports but my home network is capped at 1gb over Ethernet and bridging breaks a ton of the features I rely on. Also I have a 10gbE usbc adapter for my Mac but it’s not very reliable on my pc and doesn’t really matter with the limitations of my home network.
I’ve considered a 10gbE switch but that’s more than a thunderbolt card and I’d have to get a better network card too. I’ve got two 2.5 ports on my pc which was fine with my 2800 but it’s only 1/4 of the bandwidth of my 6800.
Just makes more sense to use thunderbolt since I have 1ft, 3ft, and 6ft thunderbolt 4 cables and thunderbolt is far more capable.
Good luck doing that now, DDR4 has been mostly out of production for a while now and prices are skyrocketing
Locking supported drives does not mean reliability improves unless you actually change how you validate them. Nothing indicates this was more then an attempt to create an additional recenue stream.
And obviously it backfired showing that they had no idea how much it was actually consumers buying devices segmented for small business.
Yea, it was in July 2024; I paid $28 for 16gb and it's going for $80 now.
I don't plan on touching my NAS for a good decade, barring any hard drive issues, so not too concerned.
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Their website clearly indicates that some do, stating (quote):
“over half of Fortune 500 businesses across education, IT, manufacturing, media, entertainment, non-profit, retail, and transportation use Synology to manage their digital assets.”
I’say they’re clearly trying to work their way up to such businesses. Whether they’ll be successful and how much, I don’t know. There will, of course, remain more “conservative” IT staff that base their decisions experience from ten years ago, not trust anything they don’t know/that doesn’t have a decade-long track record in enterprise use - not considering them for years to come.
It does. Marginally. Kind of. Some of the time.
The devil is in the details: weird issues with, for example, firmware incompatibility or degraded performance in specific hardware configurations are rare - but they’ve been known to exist. And when they hit you, they’re often hard to diagnose and pinpoint.
Is it a cash grab? Certainly, when they could’ve just as well designate them as merely unsupported (without technically locking them out).
Yeah all that mens is they have some enterprise customers using synology for storing stuff like Windows updates for local deployment.
No enterprise is using synology for data they actually care about.
I went through a couple Synologys but got frustrated with their limitations and dumb policies, and now use a Mac Mini as file server and htpc. Its probably more expensive than a NAS device by the time you add up everything, and a messier setup with all the wires and stuff, but its way more capable and efficient. If your dataset isn't too large getting a mini with large internal storage really simplifies things, and a couple Thunderbolt SSD's for backups keeps it completely silent and speedy. Before the Synologys I used to use old Mac laptops for the same function that worked great too.
That assumes the custom firmware actually changes the behavior of the drive rather then just control what works.
Because there was a tested set of drives already before, and nothing says the testing has actually changed.
I think this article sums it up pretty well: https://www.servethehome.com/synology-lost-the-plot-with-hard-drive-locking-move/
I sympathize with Synology as I like them as a company. I also work in product management so I can picture pretty easily how something like this happens. I’ve had various CEO’s and VP’s that don’t really understand customers push me to something similar and it can be hard to push back even when it’s pretty clear thats the right thing to do.
A little quick Googling suggests those using this for a NAS tend to use a 3rd party NAS OS like TrueNAS or UnRAID. Question for those of you who have experience with such NAS OS's and also ready-made NAS products such as Synology, QNAP, etc.; what do you think of the learning curve for a newbie of starting out with a 3rd party NAS SO like TrueNAS or UnRAID vs. a proprietary NAS OS like Synology's, UGreen's, etc.?
I ask given that some people considering a 1st NAS may think getting a ready-made unit with it's own OS and some app.s ecosystem will be a bit easier, more intuitive and/or confront them with less of a confusing myriad array of choices. We're on a Mac-focused forum, not a Linux-focused forum, and while some users may be 'techies' who enjoy tech-related challenges, I suspect there are many who want it to 'just work,' with as little aggravation as possible.
I'd say theres definitely a learning curve for anyone who is completely new to the concepts or functionality of the software or NAS functions, but that is generally true for any system someone might choose to use.
The additional flexibility and configurability of a DIY solution can bring complexity when using advanced features.
I wouldnt recommend the DIY approach for a total newbie, but for most savvy users with the right resources, its pretty straightforward. There are lots of good guides and howto articles that would help get things going for anyone interested in installing their own NAS software solution.
The chassis I mentioned requires an expansion card to interface it with a PC. Said PC would need a boot drive to install an operating system and NAS software on, and then you administer the software (typically) via a web interface served by the PC. Fundamentally, it is not that much different than a premade solution, but does require a bit more research/knowledge to get started.
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Using a Synology 224+ with Seagate Ironwolf drives. This combo was actually recommended by Amazon. No issues whatsoever. Don’t feel anything like locked in. It’s simple NAS setup that I can replace if I ever need to (or if there is a technological « great leap forward » that I feel compelled to take advantage of). For now it does the job.
The learning curve is steep but not insurmountable. The thing about going DIY is that you're basically promoting yourself to Linux admin (and even if you already are one, in Unraid's case, those skills are not always immediately transferable).
I would only recommend DIY if the user has already ruled out commercially available off-the-shelf solutions. If nothing on the market or within the budget works, then yeah, you're kinda screwed and will probably have to build your own.