A big part of the appeal of Synology was that you could just forget about it. I have a little one in the corner that's just been sitting there serving files out over SMB for years now. It doesn't need to do anything more and I don't need to think about it.

A lot of the alternatives being proposed are not so easy to maintain. A full general purpose OS install doesn't really take care of itself. And I don't have (and don't want) a 19-inch rack at home. Ever.

So what's the set-up-and-forget-until-it-gets-kicked-over option?

This.

I came to Synology after years of managing regular Linux (Debian) servers, then Unraid, and then Synology.

Synology was the most expensive thing I’ve used but I also _never_ think about it. The same could not be said for previous setups.

I want a stupid-easy NAS, plug-and-play, hotswapable bays. I’m not interested in having to shut down a tower and open it up to swap/add drives.

I have 2x12-bay Synology’s and I haven’t found an equivalent product yet (open to options).

So much this. I left another comment that touched on this.

I want a small reliable box that I just put in the corner and I can forget about for months at a time, as long as it provides me the services I configured it for. I access my NAS UI maybe once every 3 months.

I know exactly how to roll my own NAS (and I'm already rolling my own router), but I just don't want to deal with operating it.

Synology still scores very high on this single metric.

A lot of commenters don't seem to understand how much of a pain in the ass rolling your own NAS is. And then dealing with drive failures and expanding the storage pool, which is dead simple with Synology, but is completely hair raising (if not impossible) with other solutions.

There's really nothing that comes close to the hardware + software package Synology offers .

I was looking for alternatives, but anything else didn't come close to Syno Photos+Drive+Surveillance+Active Backup package you get with the NAS.

There's alternatives to each, sure, but they mostly need massively more powerful hardware to run pile of docker containers and end up being alpha quality.

I switched to QNAP and it's been fine.

UnRaid. I'm currently evaluating it on my old 2014 motherboard.

The WebUI is responsive, it can be a bit brickish around the edges requiring you dive in to the logs if something doesn't work; turned out to be bad ram on my host refusing KVM to boot. Once it's up and working it sails.

GPU-PassThru in a Windows VM is proving incredibly smooth especially with using Moonshine on FreeBSD.

The docker ecosystem is a nice addition and the community seems fair. I can too throw all my old SSD drives without limitation (granted the basic licenses only allows six) is nifty in saving dust.

It being based off Slackware is pleasing. It is closed source but so is Synology and for $100 for a fully unlocked feature-rich NAS/OS - totally.

https://unraid.net/community/apps

> A full general purpose OS install doesn't really take care of itself.

A Debian stable mostly does except on upgrades, and that's rare and painless enough. Even with a Synology you still need to make sure you have proper monitoring in case the hard drives start failing.

That's right. I bought a DS1019+ in 2019 and it's been running constantly for 6 years (except for a handful of power outages and house moves). The power adapter did fail last year and I had to buy a dodgy (albeit well-reviewed) third-party replacement.

There isn't many, as stupid as it may sound, I keep burning CD/DVD/BluRay and piling up external drives.

Yes, it is a pain versus having a NAS, but at least I don't have to deal with this kind of stuff.

Depending on features:

Starters: Fractal define - mid tower- 8 official 3.5" bays. With plenty of open space for more.

Jonsbo cases are the most NAS-like.

OS: Easy button: FreeNAS. Maybe the newer TrueNAS Core rework. As long as you don't need the latest and greatest in features, and at this point probably a bunch of unfixed security.

Otherwise it's Truenas Scale- just avoid the docker/VM system. Its a complete cluster.

I dearly wish Cockpit Project was up to par for this.

If all you’re doing is an smb share i don’t see how a windows box is any more effort to maintain.

lots of things will autoinstall security updates nowadays.

Debian and unattended upgrades might need a tweak if you want it to actually reboot by itself, but I think the option is there

`ssh://pi@raspberrypi.local:raspberry` with "while true; do ls /dev/ | grep ^sd | xargs mount; done" in rc.local, running outdated 10 years old Linux Kernel booting from ROM with write enable pin tied to ground, is all that's needed. There's probably sshfs for everything so protocol support for dozen things isn't a must.

I mean, I have one for handling an HDD with busted power circuit that cause system resets at regular intervals(likely brush sparks from a power steering motor went back up through USB and killed it). It's almost wrong that there isn't a pre-made solution for this.