All articles tagged with #synology
Synology has reversed some of its previous drive restrictions on its 2025 model NAS devices, allowing the use of non-verified third-party drives with the latest DSM update, after facing customer feedback and criticism over its earlier policies that mandated expensive Synology-branded drives for reliability and performance.
Synology reversed its policy banning third-party HDDs after significant customer backlash and declining sales, highlighting a disconnect between leadership and customer needs. The move was seen as a short-sighted profit-driven decision that damaged trust and could threaten the company's long-term viability, especially as customers shift towards custom solutions and alternative brands. The incident underscores the importance of understanding customer values and maintaining support for open hardware compatibility.
Synology has removed HDD restrictions on its 2025 DiskStation models with the DSM 7.3 update, allowing the use of third-party NAS drives like WD Red and Seagate IronWolf, thereby increasing flexibility and competitiveness of these NAS devices.
In celebration of World Backup Day, consider investing in a network attached storage (NAS) for data protection, with Synology offering three recommended models: DS223j, DS224+, and DS1522+. NAS provides cost-effective ownership of storage and supports the 3-2-1 backup rule. Synology's NAS are known for their reliability, ease of use, and robust app support. World Backup Day also brings discounts on hard drives and SSDs, making it the perfect time to invest in storage solutions.
Synology is offering a Black Friday deal on its DiskStation DS923+ 4-bay NAS, which is now priced at $479, a $120 discount from its usual selling price. The DS923+ is considered the best 4-bay Plex NAS currently available, featuring upgrades such as Ryzen hardware, support for M.2 drives, and the ability to switch to 10 Gigabit networking. While it lacks hardware transcoding for Plex content, it excels in day-to-day tasks and is highly recommended for building a home media server. Due to high demand, it is advised to act quickly as stock may run out fast.
Some Western Digital hard drives used in Synology NAS are flashing warning alerts triggered by the manufacturer's internal SMART data that reports usage stats and monitors health, after being powered on for three years. The warnings can get people to miss real issues like reallocated sectors. Western Digital's documentation indicates to flag for drive replacement as a recommended action at the three-year mark. The Synology subreddit has had discussions about how to disable WDDA and thereby ignore the warning to use all Synology features again.
Western Digital's NAS hard drives using Western Digital Device Analytics (WDDA) are automatically given a warning label in Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM) after three years of use, causing panic and anger among customers who accuse the company of age-shaming drives to push people to buy new HDDs prematurely. The warning labels affect devices supporting WDDA, including models with model numbers ending in -13 to -21 that are operating on DSM 7.0, DSM 7.1, and DSM 7.2. Western Digital already had a steep climb to win back NAS customers' trust after shipping NAS drives with SMR instead of CMR.