[lazide]

The issue is QNAP has terrible quality/stability at the OS level compared to Synology (also with Apps).

The number of times I’ve broken things on QNAP systems doing what should be normal functionality, only to find out it’s because of some dumb implementation detail is over a dozen. Synology, maybe 1-2.

Roughly the same number of systems/time in use too.

[transpute]

> QNAP has terrible quality/stability at the OS level

Some QNAP devices can be coaxed into running Debian.

https://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Debian_Installation_On_QNAP

https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/QNAP

[m000]

Mind that these are ancient models that are dog slow for anything more than serving files. Not that they are fast in serving files...

I did the procedure on my (now 15yo) TS-410, mostly because the vendored Samba is not compatible with Windows 11 (I had turned-off all secondary services years ago). It took a few days to backup around 8TB of data to external drives. And AROUND 2 WEEKS to restore them (USB2 CPU overhead + RAID5 writes == SLOOOOOW).

Even to get the time down to 2 weeks, I really had to experiment with different modes of copying. My final setup was HDD <-USB3-> RPi4 <-GbE-> TS-410. This relieved TS-410 CPU from the overhead of running the USB stack. I also had to use rsync daemon on TS-410 to avoid the overhead of running rsync over SSH.

So, it's definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you go through the trouble, you can keep the box alive as off-site backup for a few more years.

Having said that, I have to commend QNAP for providing security updates for all this time. The latest firmware update for TS-410 is dated 2024-07-01 [1]. This is really going beyond and above supporting your product when it comes to consumer-level devices.

[1] https://www.qnap.com/en/download?model=ts-410&category=firmw...

[frontlodjkgi]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just build any NAS and chuck Debian on it if you didn't care about the OS and vendor software to begin with?

[transpute]

e.g. QNAP has rare hardware combo of half-depth 1U low-power Arm NAS /w mainline Linux support, 32GB ECC RAM, dual NVME, 4x hotswap SATA, 2x10G SFP, 2x2.5G copper, hardware support for ZFS encryption, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40868855.

In theory, one could fit an Arm RK3588 SBC with NVME-to-PCIe-to-HBA or NVME-to-SATA into half-depth JBOD case. That would give up 2x10G SFP, 2xNVME and ECC RAM.

[frontlodjkgi]

Maybe it's just me, but rare harware isn't something I'd look for in a reliable storage system unless I had a really special need general hardware just couldn't be made to do

[transpute]

Per sibling comment, "unique" is a better descriptor than "rare". The NAS is made in Taiwan and has been readily available from Amazon or QNAP store.

The Marvell CN913x SoC has been shipping for 5 years, following the predecessor Armada SoC family released 10 years ago and used in multiple consumer NAS products, https://linuxgizmos.com/marvell-lifts-curtain-on-popular-nas.... Mainline Linux support for this SoC has benefited from years of contributions, while Marvell made incremental hardware improvements without losing previous Linux support.

[j45]

This is spot on. I'd like to add that unique often in hardware is not forcing people to buy a few times to get it right, especially first time buyers.

[j45]

Rare more means a unique combination of common hardware products, where other manufacturers don't put all of the features into one piece of hardware like qnap or others might, to keep people buying more devices to get what they want, or buy a device that is way too overkill for their needs.

[Scene_Cast2]

"Rare" in this case is referring to a unique offering, not to the availability of that particular part.

As I understand, migrating to other hardware wouldn't be an issue if availability becomes an issue.

[lazide]

I ended up doing that with a larger QNAP I had. It did have some odd bugs that I needed to track down, but otherwise was a good (albeit overly expensive) NAS. I used zfs.

[j45]

Storage should be an appliance, or you're the appliance repair man always on call.

[nehal3m]

Sure, but don't you lose the app ecosystem then?

[transpute]

Hacker flexibility or consumer take-it-or-leave-it, pick one.

Debian offers flexibility and control, at the cost of time and effort. PhotoSync mobile apps will reliably sync mobile devices with NAS over standard protocols, including SSH/SFTP. A few mobile apps do work with self-hosted WebDAV and CalDAV. XPenology attempts to support Synology apps on standard Linux, without excluding standard Debian packages.

[tankenmate]

Debian's software repo is about 500 times bigger than Synology's.

[Tepix]

FWIW, i haven't had any real issues with QNAP since 10 years or so, but i'm pretty much only using basic features.

Once i added a 4th drive to a RAID 5 set and i was impressed that it performed the operation on-line. Neat.

Oh, there was one issue: A while ago my Timemachine backups were unreliable, but i haven't had that issue since three years or so.

[j45]

It's news to me, maybe I haven't touched mine much out of leaving it absolutely stock.

Were you installing things manually or just using the app store?