I…. I can’t believe you are defending (or more accurately saying “it’s not that bad”) losing access to the root of your hard drive. It screams incompetence on Miroslop’s part.

While I hate Microslop as much as the next guy - critical thinking like this is woefully absent on the internet…

Good to know, I hadn’t heard that. I still am leery though - they showed their hand.

I’ve been a synology user and fan for over 15 years now. Both personally and at work. They used to be powerful-for-the-price, efficient devices with good software. Photos, drive, media server, file storage, and docker containers were the big use cases. They were easy to set up securely for remote connections, and I’ve never seen one fail.

Nowadays though, I’d recommend something else. They have started on the enshittification journey. They removed hardware decoding features, they force you into their hard drives now, the hardware is overpriced, and other diy systems have caught up wrt features and ease of setup. Synology isn’t bad today, it’s just not the only game in town anymore. You can get more for less money with the same amount of effort.

WRT to data collection-I don’t think they collect anything now. But I’m not sure I trust them anymore. It probably won’t stay that way.