Synology, the popular network-attached storage (NAS) maker, appears to be bearing down on third party hard drives and how they can be used with all future NAS systems made by the brand. To put it simply: if the hard drive isn’t certified, it may not be given access to certain features.
Synology announced the change in its “policy” in a press release for its European market, stating that “starting with Plus Series models released in 2025”, only Synology-branded drives and drives that are certified to meet its specifications will “offer the full range of features and support”. The good news, however, is that older NAS systems from the brand won’t be affected by the update.
Another bit of good news (sort of) is that these changes may just be restricted to the country of Germany or just the EU. We’ve reached out to Synology’s local representative about this supposed change in hardware support but at the publication of this article, they’ve yet to provide us with a comment.
That said, Synology’s certified NAS hard drives – it doesn’t actually make hard drives but rather rebrands units from Toshiba and Seagate – aren’t exactly cheap, and neither are its NAS systems. On average, the decent models start from the RM2,500 mark and cost close to RM6,000. And that’s without said hard drives.
(Source: Synology, Ars Technica)
