Synology press release regarding changes to HDD compatibility
old.reddit.com
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But the language of the communication (ie "compatible", disks in old products will continue to work) sounds very like a move like HP printers.
"We want recurring revenues and we are now in a leading position, so we will ensure to make a margin on disks used with our products"
At first it is soft, ok it works with "compatible" drives, but they block the features in software instead of providing them as "best effort". Then, "in the interest of the users, and security blabla, non certified hard drive will straight refused by the system".
That is really hard because that was the interest of geek products like Synology to be like your own computer, that you can easily ticket and use whatever disk in whatever configuration that you wanted, even if at your own risk sometimes
Exactly that. My risk tolerance and multi-backup strategy means I use cheap old data center HDDs from Ebay for a fraction of the price. Now, if my NAS hardware itself goes kaput or I want to add new devices in the future, I may have to worry about the cost of my drives ramping up or risk potentially losing functionality.
The fact that they say "In addition, the migration of hard disks from existing Synology NAS to a new Plus model will continue to be possible without restrictions." to me means that this isn't due to a technical restriction, but just a desire to increase their HDD revenue stream.
Makes it very hard to recommend Synology going forward. This is not the first seemingly anti-consumer step they've taken recently.
HP servers requiring HP disks might have been first