Ten Ways NAS Hardware Is Getting Enshitified and Losing User Control
Ten Ways NAS Is Getting Enshitified
I examine how the Network Attached Storage market is shifting from modularity to restrictive design patterns. Manufacturers are increasingly soldering LPDDR RAM, limiting network speeds to 1GbE, and enforcing drive lock-in policies. These cost-cutting measures, combined with recycled hardware generations and PCIe lane throttling, are eroding user control and inflating the total cost of ownership for local storage.
What was long considered an industry defined by modularity, local ownership, and hardware longevity is increasingly adopting the restrictive design patterns common in mobile and walled-garden tech ecosystems.
- userbinator
This architectural shift eliminates the user’s ability to expand memory capacity as self-hosting demands grow, effectively putting a permanent ceiling on running memory-heavy Docker containers, ZFS pools, or virtual machines.
That's not a NAS anymore, that's a full server. I think of a NAS as "low-power computer with lots of storage attached", so not being able to upgrade the RAM on one isn't all that surprising.
- zeafoamrun
I built my own NAS, just Ubuntu+ZFS using an old PC I had and it works great. Don't know why people are so crazy about buying prebuilt NASes.
- urbandw311er
The cookie preference pop up on this site is unacceptable - 1 click to accept all cookies, SEVEN clicks to reject all cookies.
- Almondsetat
I don't share the author's view of the OSs becoming copycats of eachother and not that specialized.
Truth to be told, a NAS is the perfect place to have your home server. You can have both your applications and data on the same device and avoid having to build a lab just to have nextcloud or some other utility self hosted. However, to achieve this, the OS must become more similar to a normal linux distro, for better or for worse
- duxup
Are there any good out of the box NAS options?
- cyberrock
While I don't disagree with the individual complaints, I've seen this niche go from running scuffed OSes on underpowered Synologies or building DIY NASes with limited case options like the Node 304, to multiple hot swap NASes running great x86 chips (and memory slots) and many DIY build paths including 3D printed cases. Things probably suck for those reliant on Synology, but I'm stoked for this hobby, especially when Minisforum/Aoostar to start pumping out Wildcat Lake stuff.
- asdewqqwer
I use a mini amd pc with a disk bay. Surprisingly it is cheaper than many nas, and much more configurable (from memory to ssd) and have a much better gpu.
The only challenge would be finding a very good cable that stays solidly.
- thadt
Given the (non-) responsiveness of the page, I’m going with they focused too much on “storage” and not enough on “network attached.”