Synology to require self-branded drives with upcoming NAS systems
Synology plans to restrict 3rd party HDDs with upcoming NAS models
Synology has confirmed that their new Plus series NAS systems will soon place restrictions on users of non-Synology HDDs. This news was first spotted by HardwareLuxx, following Synology’s announcement on their German website. Users of 3rd party hard drives will face restrictions, limiting the usability of their NAS products.
Synology claims that this move will grant users higher levels of “security, reliability, and performance.” Another way of putting it is that the company wants to profit from HDD sales by forcing its users to purchase drives from them. Note that Synology is not an HDD producer. Their drives are rebranded drives from other vendors.
Below is Synology’s press release about their upcoming Plus series NAS devices.
Following the success of the High-Performance series, the company is now increasingly relying on Synology’s own storage media for the Plus series models, which will be released starting in 2025. Users will thus benefit from higher performance, increased reliability, and more efficient support.
“With our proprietary hard drive solution, we have already seen significant benefits for our customers in a variety of deployment scenarios,” said Chad Chiang, Managing Director of Synology GmbH and Synology UK. “By expanding our integrated ecosystem to the Plus series, we aim to provide all users-from home users to small businesses-with the highest levels of security and performance, while also offering significantly more efficient support.”
For users, this means that starting with the Plus series models released in 2025, only Synology’s own hard drives and third-party hard drives certified according to Synology’s specifications will be compatible and offer the full range of functions and support.
There will be no changes for Plus models released up to and including 2024 (excluding the XS Plus series and rack models). Furthermore, migrating hard drives from existing Synology NAS to a new Plus model will continue to be possible without restrictions.
The use of compatible and unlisted hard drives will be subject to certain restrictions in the future, such as pool creation and support for issues and failures caused by the use of incompatible storage media. Volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic hard drive firmware updates will only be available for Synology hard drives in the future.
Tight integration of Synology NAS systems and hard drives reduces compatibility issues and increases system reliability and performance. At the same time, firmware updates and security patches can be deployed more efficiently, ensuring a high level of data security and more efficient support for Synology customers.
– Synology Germany (Machine Translated)
Synology’s 2024 and older NAS systems (excluding their XS Plus series and rack models) will be unaffected by this change. Furthermore, 3rd party drives from Synology’s existing NAS solutions can be migrated and used on their newer NAS systems without issue.
Users of 3rd party drives on Synology’s new 2025 Plus series NAS models will face restrictions. They will lose features like pool creation and support for issues and failures caused by incompatible storage media. Volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic hard drive firmware updates will only be available for the company’s branded hard drives.
Will consumers put up with this?
Synology’s Plus series NAS solutions are targeted at small to medium-sized businesses and home users. While business users will likely be happy to pay more for each drive in the name of security and reliability, the same can’t be said for home users. Will this change cause Synology to lose the home user market? Will home users be willing to only use Synology drives, or will they purchase a NAS from a manufacturer that won’t restrict their 3rd party HDDs?
You can join the discussion on Synology dropping support for 3rd party HDDs on their newest NAS systems on the OC3D Forums.
