I should start by saying I've been a Synology user for most of a decade, and have used four different models in that time, with the current machine being a DS1621xs+. But over the last year, the company has been moving away from supporting home users and adding arbitrary restrictions, and it's time for me to move on.

I've been meaning to build my own NAS anyway, as I'm outgrowing the six bays of the Synology, and I want to use ZFS for my next file system for its self-healing properties. I also wanted to build a two-tier system with one all-flash NAS for recent and in-use data, plus a hard drive-based one for longer-term storage, as part of a 3-2-1 backup solution. I'll also be splitting off any VMs and Docker containers from the new NAS units onto a cluster of Proxmox hosts, for higher availability and to keep the NAS resources available for other tasks. Synology has served me well for years, but it's time to rebuild on hardware and software I control.

To get away from arbitrary restrictions

I don't want to be limited in hard drive choice

The new third-party hard drive compatibility restrictions finally pushed me away from using Synology again. The TLDR for that situation is that Synology will only support Synology-branded drives or ones certified by the company on new models. That means no drive health stats, no ability to add unsupported drives to storage pools, and more. There are already not many hard drive manufacturers to choose from, and Synology doesn't have the latest capacities you might want if, like me, you've been steadily upgrading your pool over the years.

My largest drives are 22TB, and I have to go higher than that to expand the pool. The problem for me is that Synology's largest hard drive is 20TB, leaving me without an upgrade path. Even if I wanted to stay in the Synology ecosystem, I couldn't. Not without losing out on support and likely some features as well. But building my own NAS means choices are there again, and if I'm using ZFS, I can make vdevs and then storage pools to take advantage of the mix of drives I have, so I don't have to go for ever-increasing drive sizes for my storage needs.

Oh, and the other arbitrary restriction? Synology NAS units have a tiny list of PCIe add-in cards for faster networking, NVMe cache, and other improvements. All of these are proprietary, and they're all costly compared to the general market. 10GbE fiber networking cards are $300+ for the unit I have, and it's just a silly cost when I can pick up enterprise hardware on eBay for pennies in comparison.

To use hardware transcoding

Adding a discrete GPU brings plenty of power

The latest thing that Synology has removed is hardware transcoding, a mainstay of personal media servers, and one of the reasons that people buy a NAS in the first place. It's the kind of decision that doesn't make any sense, unless it's a veiled push to thwart video privacy by making it impossible to play media files from those NAS devices. Maybe it's just the next link in the chain, as Synology has been removing media playback features for years, leaving enthusiasts looking for third-party replacements.

Dropping HEVC support is a cost-cutting measure for Synology, nothing else. Now, it doesn't have to pay the licensing fee, while still charging users the same amount for their NAS enclosures. With this and removing hardware transcoding support, the CPU must do all the work when streaming video. However, not every CPU Synology supports transcoding (like many embedded Ryzen models), and integrated graphics drivers for Intel CPUs are being restricted as well.

You know what's not restricted? Adding a GPU to TrueNAS, or any of the other NAS operating systems that I could choose to use. Adding a discrete GPU for extra transcoding grunt is easy when I've got plenty of multipurpose PCIe slots, or I could build a system with an Intel CPU and use the iGPU, which gives plenty of power for 4K streaming.

To choose the operating system

I outgrew Synology's offering

Synology's DSM operating system has, and still is, one of the best things about using Synology NAS units. It's the same operating system whether you're using a consumer-level NAS or one of the enterprise rackmounts, and it's responsive, has plenty of functionality, and has a lot of third-party support because it's been around so long. But it's not the best NAS OS, and the things being removed from DSM are starting to rack up.

I've become very fond of self-hosting services, and Synology makes running containers harder than it needs to be. Sure, I could just run Portainer and do things that way, but that feels like putting a band-aid over an axe wound and hoping things will turn out all right.

I don't know exactly which NAS operating system I will switch to, because it depends heavily on which parts from my old hardware hoard will be pressed into service, but I'm excited to figure that out. I used Rockstor not long ago and found it pretty good, but I might run TrueNAS or maybe HexOS once that'sfleshed out. I like having options, and all of these let me run programs how I want to, without being limited.

I needed more space

It's not cost-effective once you go past six drives on Synology

I've got a never-ending need for storage space, and the six bays of my current NAS just aren't enough. I know I could get one of Synology's DAS units and expand through that, but it's $500 for adding another five drive bays, and I'd still be limited to the drive restrictions Synology has baked into the OS. Plus, I'd be limited to the available RAID options, and I want to use ZFS for long-term storage, not the Btrfs file system Synology uses.

As for bespoke NAS units with more than six bays, the price was already high for this unit, and I could build a complete PC for the cost of one with more drive bays. I could even go rackmount once I've got a rack set up under the stairs with all the other network equipment in, and then the only real issue is the increased power consumption. But I was planning on adding solar and whole-house storage batteries anyway, so this just gives me another reason to do that sooner.

I wanted to make an all-flash NAS

That wasn't limited to SATA SSDs

One of the things I've wanted to do for a while is build an all-flash NAS to have in my office, so I can stash the spinny hard drive NAS in another room so I don't have to listen to it. Synology has SATA SSD NAS units to do that, but they're all expensive and rackmount, and more focused on the data center or large companies. But with a mini PC with six M.2 NVMe slots, I now have a powerful, power-sipping N150-based NAS with 2.5GbE networking and enough speedy storage to be able to work from.

Working files are on this unit, whether unedited images or video footage. Then I process them, and the originals and processed files get sent to the larger NAS for long-term storage. It's faster working this way, and I can't tell you how much it's helped my sanity not having six chugging hard drives behind my ears.

I outgrew Synology but it might still be the best choice for you

While I decided to build my own NAS units in the end, I used Synology for years, and if it weren't for their recent restrictive practices, I probably wouldn't have left. The ecosystem of apps, the stability, and the prebuilt nature of the hardware meant that everything was as close to plug-and-play as possible, and I had few issues overall. That said, if you're technically inclined, building your own NAS doesn't take that much work and is a good way to reuse older hardware, as they don't need the newest CPUs to run well.