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Martin Jud
News + Trends
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Synology further restricts free choice of hard drives in NAS

Jan Johannsen
17.4.2025
Translation: machine translated

Synology has announced that it will further restrict the free choice of hard drives in NAS systems. New models in the Plus series will only accept selected HDDs. However, there is a loophole.

Restrictions on functions and support

Synology cannot physically prevent the installation of non-certified hard drives. However, they are subject to various functional restrictions. For example, the manufacturer disables lifespan analyses, automatic firmware updates and volume-wide deduplication for third-party HDDs. There will also be restrictions on the creation of storage pools and support. These are very important functions for a NAS.

Synology cites the success of the measure in the high-performance series as the reason for the extension of the hard drive requirement. With the obligation to use Synology hard drives «, users benefit from higher performance, increased reliability and more efficient support», according to the company.

Recently, used hard drives that had been sold as new caused a stir. This should not be possible with Synology hard drives. However, Synology only provides HDDs from one of the three major manufacturers with its own label.

Loophole: Transferring hard drives from older NAS

Synology does not restrict the transfer of hard drives from older NAS systems. This means you could set up the hard drives of your choice in an older NAS model and then transfer them to a new Plus series device without restriction.

Header image: Martin Jud

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Jan Johannsen
Senior Editor
Jan.Johannsen@galaxus.de

As a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus. 

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