That disk upgrade thing was a mountain out of a molehill. All they are doing is reserving some of their disk health features for synology branded disks because they’re the only ones they can verify meet their standards for their software.

Then explain why one can successfully use and old synology to “mark” drives as “authentic synology” and move them into a newer DSM model to use them. This means the mechanism amounts simply to marking disks and not binning disks or any kind of actual hardware selection. Which in turn means that “certified” Synology disks are nothing more than disks with a Synology signature. And not even in firmware, but on the platter.

And that is the “molehill” everyone is calling Synology out on.

As explained ad nauseum on various yt channels, having a hw compatibility list makes sense for users likely to buy support, like business users. It makes little sense in a home market where users are both more likely to buy 3rd party disks and will not likely invoke official Synology support.

But add on top of it that there is no functional hardware difference between certified and non-certified, and it becomes pretty clear that Synology is to be avoided.

Do not promote these Synology jerks.

Synology’s software is awful. Simply controlling NFS shares is an exercise in insanity, and don’t get me started on ACLs.

Further, synology is a real bastard company currently trying to enshittify hardware (disk) upgrades, among other terrible practices:

https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/1kmx5td/can_we_still_trust_synology_users_catch_quiet/

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/synology-requires-self-branded-drives-for-some-consumer-nas-systems-drops-full-functionality-and-support-for-third-party-hdds

Full disclosure, I myself am running an old ds211j for backups. It’s way out of updates, and there isn’t much of a 3rd party image collection for synology hardware, but it works fine and lives in its own locked down subnet.

Wow, you just gave me flashbacks to my first Linux/unix job in 2008. Tripwire and logwatch reports to review every morning.