Synology confirms that higher-end NAS products will require its branded drives

Stembolt

Popular NAS-maker Synology has confirmed and slightly clarified a policy that appeared on its German website earlier this week: Its “Plus” tier of devices, starting with the 2025 series, will require Synology-branded hard drives for full compatibility, at least at first.

“Synology-branded drives will be needed for use in the newly announced Plus series, with plans to update the Product Compatibility List as additional drives can be thoroughly vetted in Synology systems,” a Synology representative told Ars by email. “Extensive internal testing has shown that drives that follow a rigorous validation process when paired with Synology systems are at less risk of drive failure and ongoing compatibility issues.”

JanJ

Absolutely Ridiculous!
Seagate has been making drives for 40 Years.
Synology has been second sourcing drives and stuffing their own firmware in them for 40 months!

Who are you going to trust?

I trust Seagate!
What a feature! NOT BEING ABLE TO INSTALL A NAS rated & manufactured DRIVE especially for NAS! But you can use a hacked version of a drive whose base drive is NOT WORTHY!

Can you say MONEY GRAB? Their drives are more $$$ What A Surprise!

My 3x older Synology NAS’s will continue using Seagate NAS drives!

I see Synology collapsing under their own weight in the future.

Lebon14

There’s a known workaround that I’ve heard from the latest LTT WANshow (Apr. 18 2025) where you can initialize an array in an older Synology NAS then transfer them into the new high end one and they’ll work with the full features.

I have a Synology NAS myself coz I didn’t want any headache in building a NAS of my own. So, if this NAS was to fail, I’d most certainly NOT go with another Synology NAS. The fact they also lock the 10gbps network capable ones in their very high-end NAS fucking sucks.

So, yeah… if I ever get teh chance, I’ll give the finger to Synology.

urbanriot

Stembolt

Synology

I’ve never been a fan of Synology, they’re super unreliable compared to other manufacturers. Their support was domestic and friendly whenever I spoke to them but we always heard, “oh there’s a bug with that firmware, you need to go back to this version for the NAS unit to stop dying randomly until we fix the bug in the last 5 firmwares”.

JanJ

Seagate has been making drives for 40 Years.

Yea and they’ve been one of the most notoriously bad drives out there in the IT world. We used to have a rule, 1 Seagate drive will fail in a RAID set within a year of installing. The only drives they had that ever seemed to be realiable were their 10K NAS series, like the ST600MM0026, ST900MM036, etc., series of drives.

Octavean

Who here is surprised though? I’m not. Since I’ve generally been interested in the higher end models this has been something of a known quantity for a while. I’ve migrated away from Synology because the hardware to price ratio being so steep. I still have my 8 bay Synology DS1815+ (Intel Atom C2538 / 4 cores / 4 threads) and migrated to a QNAP TS-653D 6 bay (Intel Celeron J4125 / 4 cores / 4 threads / upgraded to 10GbE) and most recently upgraded to an 8 bay UGreen DXP8800 Plus NAS (Intel Core i5 1235U 10 cores / 12 threads / dual 10GbE) via Kickstarter.

The UGreen DXP8800 Plus is the best NAS I’ve ever owned and it was under ~$1000 USD. UGOS is serviceable and the option is there to switch to a third party OS if preferred. I would have been happy staying with Synology if they didn’t have such dedication to weak hardware specs like lackluster SoCs and 1GbE for astronomical prices. This Synology HDD issue is just a bridge too far for many.

planet

Wondering about this brand of router. Appears ac versions hit market around 2018. AX versions around 2022. Nothing new on horizon that I can find. Cool thing is SRM OS updates continue for all hardware ac and ax. It’s very hard finding a home noob router that offers ongoing firmware security updates. Do you think purchasing one of the 2022 released routers would make sense? I’d hope since the 2018 ac router continues receiving firmware updates in 2025, the 2022 ax router would be good for several more years. Appreciate insights.

JanJ

urbanriot
I’m still running Seagate drives 10 years after purchase.
One group, given to me after 5-6 years in video server use, used here off & on since 2015, for a RAID 0 Video Editing array, then in use in Synology NAS as raid SHR. I’d still be using them if they were larger. Can’t kill them! (I did one-dropped it by accident!)
Used them at work, and found their support staff receptive of warranty and firmware upgrades. Drives given me had custom firmware in them.

Octavean

JanJ

Well the the thing is it might be perfectly fine for Synology to restrict HDD / SSD brands for the Enterprise market. In the retail / SOHO arena not so much. Overall, IMO Synology should provide alerts for legitimate faults but trust that the admin can deal with it and allow them to dismiss the alerts. In the retail / SOHO market it just feels too much like a walled garden / cash grab.

If someone wants to use older drives or refurb drives with high number of power on hours or perhaps some iffy SMART info inform but don’t obstruct. Let people do what they need to do.

I’m confident that I could work my way around such a hardware restriction but no one should have to.

urbanriot

Octavean

Well the the thing is it might be perfectly fine for Synology to restrict HDD / SSD brands for the Enterprise market.

Not really though, in the enterprise market companies have done their best to enhance their compatibilities with other drives for ages. It’s the worst feeling around when you buy a server and they’re like, “oh, yea, we can’t help you with this issue that has nothing to do with your drive because your drive isn’t on the validated list of drives compatible with this server.” People won’t buy equipment if they’re too selective about drive compatibility in the enterprise, especially when there are shortages of certain brands / models.

Overall this is a dumb decision because there are at least two other major NAS manufacturers who don’t care whose drives you use and they don’t have the history of issues that Synology has had with their own equipment that has nothing to do with anyone else’s drives.

Octavean

urbanriot What two other manufacturers would that be?

bennor

Seems Synology may be rethinking this move.

Synology: Third-Party Hard Drives Will Be Officially Supported Again In The Future

While browsing the web, I stumbled upon an official statement from @SynologyEurope in response to a comment available in the comments section of the video Synology Solution Data 2025. In their reply to the user, Synology appears to confirm that support for hard drives from other brands will be reinstated in the future. It certainly won’t happen overnight, but it seems that the company has understood the huge impact that the Synology community has had regarding this important topic.

Hello @RogerStocker,
Thanks for your candid comment! We know that many users would like more flexibility with HDDs. We are currently in discussions with manufacturers to ensure that third-party hard drives will be officially supported again in the future. However, this is a process that won’t be completed overnight.
We will keep you updated – thank you for your patience! 💡

Octavean

bennor If this is accurate then great. However, it doesn’t change the frequent use of anemic hardware and high prices.

Andyross

If you were considering the purchase of a Synology NAS but were leery of the unreasonably high cost of populating it with special Synology-branded hard disk drives, you can breathe a little easier today. In a press release dated October 8, Synology noted that with the release of its latest Disk Station Manager (DSM) update, some of its 2025 model-year products—specifically, the Plus, Value, and J-series DiskStation NAS devices—would “support the installation and storage pool creation of non-validated third-party drives.”

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/synology-caves-walks-back-some-drive-restrictions-on-upcoming-nas-models/