Greetings! I’ve been daily driving a Raspberry Pi 4B as a home server for quite a while now and thought it was a great time to make the switch to a proper NAS.
My current Home Server setup uses 2 Raspberry Pi’s. One is where i selfhost all of the stuff i need, and one hosts my website.
The Pi only has 4gb of RAM, which is ok for me. But i can’t really say much about it’s performance. In Jellyfin, it’s struggling with streaming music. Not even a movie, a single MP3 file, it struggles with it.
I tried solutions like Nextcloud for a Selfhosted Cloud Storage Solution, but it would always wipe out it’s config every time the pi reboots.
I am looking forward to buy a Synology NAS. Their Web interface seems intuitive (theres even docker support too) and easy to use. However, i really am concerned on what data can Synology collect off of it.
So, what data can Synology collect off the NAS and is it safe in a Privacy nerd’s view?
I’ve been a synology user and fan for over 15 years now. Both personally and at work. They used to be powerful-for-the-price, efficient devices with good software. Photos, drive, media server, file storage, and docker containers were the big use cases. They were easy to set up securely for remote connections, and I’ve never seen one fail.
Nowadays though, I’d recommend something else. They have started on the enshittification journey. They removed hardware decoding features, they force you into their hard drives now, the hardware is overpriced, and other diy systems have caught up wrt features and ease of setup. Synology isn’t bad today, it’s just not the only game in town anymore. You can get more for less money with the same amount of effort.
WRT to data collection-I don’t think they collect anything now. But I’m not sure I trust them anymore. It probably won’t stay that way.
Synology has walked back their HDD decision (for now…), but as a DS224+ owner I actually just bought a new system, because I find the Synology software ecosystem to be kind of clunky and limiting.
Good to know, I hadn’t heard that. I still am leery though - they showed their hand.
I looked into ready made NAS machines but wasn’t sold on the software that came with them. Ended up building a small PC and installing OpenMediaVault on it which I have been super happy with.
Depending on how many HDD bays you need you can just buy a refurbished office Dell or HP and it’ll do the job more than adequately.
Don’t. I have had many in the past. They are great devices and easy to manage, but with their recent changes, they can no longer be recommended or trusted. I gave all mine away.
You may be interested in unraid as that is also pretty easy to use. You can probably install unraid onto a qnap.
If you’re not concerned about them starting to require that you use Synology-branded hard drives, then :
For most Synology services/apps, we do not collect data on what you store or what you do with your files. We generally only collect statistical data on what packages are installed and which functionality is used. This helps us keep track of what features are important or popular. Purely statistical data is not linked to your account and does not include Personal Identifiable Information (PII). (Source: the other forum)
Quick update: I just did a bit of research myself and found out that the RAM in those NASes are not replacible and are soldered onto the motherboard. And for sure i might no longer consider buying one.
I like the Synology DSM’s UI, I know Xpenology exists, but i’d rather not pay for a NAS that will most likely become ewaste in a few years.
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Don’t disagree with your post, I’ve gone that route too, but I have had a couple RAIDs crash over the decades and dashing to a computer store and slapping drives from a dead box to a new one got me back up and running the quickest.
I can totally build a server with my spare parts lying around, but my system doesn’t care when I have free time to tinker; assume it will fail at the worst possible time like the day you leave on vacation.
But yeah, if you’re pinching pennies, build something fun and learn along the way. Frustration is the key to memory permanence. 😁
Do not do this. You will have an easier time upgrading and migrating to a Pi 5 (they can be bought with up to 16GB RAM), and not have to fight bullshit Synology bloatware.
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