[mszcz]

Same here. I recently started thinking about upgrading my Synology NAS to something newer they offered. When I read about the hard drive restrictions I thought no-one would be _that_ stupid. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be 100% true. I mean, what the fuck?

So, I started to look around and landed on Ugreen. They offered a NAS with more RAM (and the ability to upgrade), better connectivity (2.5GbE + 10 GbE), faster CPU, ability to install custom OSes (like TrueNAS), the OS resides on a separate, user-replaceable M.2 NVMe drive. All that for less money. Plus, since I control the OS, there's no way they can push some garbage it's-for-your-own-good-wink-wink update down my throat.

Bought it, didn't even start their OS and put TrueNAS Scale on it and I've never been happier. The caveat here is that I use my NAS as a NAS - no apps, no docker, no photos app. All that is on a separate box in the rack.

For me to ever trust Synology again I'd have to see some punitive action towards the idiots there that thought that whole HDD restrictions mess was a good idea. Even then, now that I've had a look around what else is available, I'm pretty sure I'll stay clear for a couple of years.