Why would you EVER buy a Synology NAS?

if you're in the market for a pre-built Nas device you're probably questioning why sonology devices cost more have worse hardware and haven't really evolved at all compared to the competition you can buy a device right now that has a much better CPU more memory better networking capabilities and costs less so it begs the question why would you buy a sonology Nas I almost went with another Nas manufacture who had better Hardware when I bought my first device and if I did none of wondertech would exist I did my research and was convinced after doing so that I had to buy a sonology and even though quite frankly I didn't want to spend the money on the hardware I did so in order to understand why you probably should end up buying a sonology device too it's important to understand what makes sonology devic is so special and it all comes down to three letters DSM sonology makes an operating system which will break down in a minute here called DSM it is to a Nas what Windows is to a PC or Mac OS is to a Mac but like Mac OS you can't get DSM without buying sonology Nas Hardware so for a second let's break down what's important when it comes to NAS Hardware because if it's so important for you to have better Hardware we should probably understand why so on a Nas you're generally not using the operating system directly of course you'll periodically access it and you'll be in it to initially configure it but once you configure it it just kind of works or at least it should for this reason the biggest sticking point for most people is networking since most anology devices come with 1 gbit NYX by default you'll get at an absolute Max 125 megabytes per second of transfer speeds this is a limitation for a lot of people and these devices probably should come with 2 and a half gbit Nicks especially in 2024 next is memory which is important but for most regular users 4 GB will probably be enough and finally the CPU the CPU is considered by some to be the least important part of the device but regardless it's the brain of the operation it'll help with speeds when accessing the UI the overall performance of the device and generally how many processes the device can handle at the same time everything I just said is either periodic or a short-term thing and for day-to-day activities a lesser CPU will be almost unnoticeable to a regular user but regardless there's one point that remains soni's Hardware is objectively worse than its competitive so why would anyone purchase an objectively worse device that costs more money DSM DSM is the best pre-built NASA operating system that exists today and this is why in order to understand DSM we need to understand what makes a good NASA operating system in the first place I view NASA operating systems like a pyramid just bear with me the higher you go on the pyramid the less important things are but the foundation that exists will support those more unimportant things the base of any good NASA operating system is the storage pool and volume based on whatever sonology device you purchase you can configure a storage pool using raid or shr and configure a volume using btrfs or ext4 you can also add on things like SSD caching but you don't have to this is important because if you run into any problems at this level everything else is useless it is the most important part and generally sonology devices are Rock Solid in this area which then brings us to the Next Level which is folder management now this encompasses a lot it's not only the creation of the shared folder but it's the permissions and actually accessing the data using SMB NFS or any other file protocols if this tier doesn't work right either the data will be accessible by people that it shouldn't be or it won't be accessible at all it is network attached storage this is how you access the storage this needs to be good and it is good in DSM the third and last what I'll call critical aspect of any good NASA operating system is security and data Integrity first you have to feel as if the OS and data is secure on the device if it is you have to Ure that specific data Integrity features like snapshots which protect against things like ransomware attacks and backups which are of the utmost importance when it comes to NAS devices work and work well sonology has a tool called snapshot replication which allows you to automate snapshots and Hyper backup to backup the data that exists on the nest without these tools a ransom someware attack or physical Hardware issue can cause you to lose all of your data without the foundation of raid and shared folders this section is useless but with those areas working well this is critical and it works well in DSM finally I'm going to put literally everything else in this last tier this is your photos app your drive syncing tools talker PC backups all the stuff that is really nice to have when everything else actually works sonaly is generally very good in this area and has very good first and thirdparty application support but the truth is if you get to this part you're probably pretty happy with everything else and it means you have a good Nas and quite honestly this is where I lose my patience with other Nas manufacturers I've tested fairly extensively other pre-built Nas operating systems and have had nothing but problems with them I don't want to call out these vendors in specific but if you look at my Channel or website you'll see exactly who I'm talking about I've seen a lot of comments lately praising the hardware of these other manufacturers quite honestly for good reasons and that's what normally gets me as well it's generally great Hardware the problem is the operating system the UI normally have bugs there are times I've had to restore from a snapshot and it didn't work right I've had problems with the Backup Tool other Nas manufacturers have a lot of security incidents we'll call them all the stuff I just mentioned is absolutely critical Nas functionality and when you run into any of the problems I've run into you're not going to be happy that your device has more memory a better CPU or better networking all you're going to care about is the data that you were storing on the Nas is gone I want to be clear about this because when I had to restore from that snapshot and it didn't work the data was gone there was nothing I could do but restore from a backup which fortunately worked which is not a fun experience when you consider the exact same task on a sonology Nas probably would have taken me like 30 seconds in total it also meant that I completely lost my faith in the product I no longer felt like I could store the important data I had on the device because if I really had to I wasn't confident that the restore for either a snapshot or backup would actually work I promise you this is the absolute last thing you want after the initial excitement of having a new device wears off all you'll care about is reliability and that's what sonology provides that a lot of these other Nas manufacturers are currently lacking so my point is most of these devic have objectively better Hardware than sonology objectively better Hardware that has a bunch of software problems at least right now and it's not going to work right when you need it so are you going to buy an objectively better device with objectively worse software are you going to even notice that the hardware is better when the software you're interacting with doesn't work right I almost did when I purchased my first Nas but you need to consider this stuff this is the problem and this is the reason why you either went with or will go with sonology this is also the reason why why they don't have to innovate can releasee devices with objectively worse hardware and charge more for it we as consumers don't really have a choice and if we actually want a functional and reliable Nas going with the sonology is really our only option right now your best other option is to build a DIY Nas and use true Nas open media Vault or unraid but there is a lot more involved with that and it's very different than just buying a pre-built Nas so please before you jump to another manufacturer for better Hardware please do your own research visit Reddit go to a Facebook page or forums or something check to make sure that you know what you're buying into because no one wants to throw money into the wind but ultimately you should buy what you want this video isn't sponsored by sonology I'm not making this as anything other than a disclaimer of some of the issues that I personally have run into so hopefully you don't but again if you get to the point and you say it's still the right device for you go for it thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time

Channel: WunderTech

Views: 26,118

Keywords: Synology NAS

Id: 8s6DKq6t_hk

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024