Synology Jumps The Shark And Restricts Hard Drives For Its NAS Devices
This news came up in a PR on Synology's German website and will surely go down as a lead balloon for existing and prospective customers (including yours truly) who would have to pay Synology's hefty premiums for otherwise affordable hard drives. The company had already limited SMART monitoring in contemporary versions of its DSM NAS operating system, a move that seemed unjustifiably petty at the time. This harsher restrictions now introduced in the Plus series already existed in its enterprise offerings.
Synology's advantage over its competition has always been its excellent DSM software and its SHR feature. Contrary to most other storage systems, in most scenarios SHR/SHR-2 can employ almost all of the available space in an array of drives of dissimilar sizes. This has proven a boon for cost-conscious SOHO NAS users who don't wish to toss perfectly old drives (or drive space) away when it's time to expand their array.
Naturally, they buy bare drives or shuck external units. As a price comparison example, Synology's 12 TB Plus drive goes for $280, only slightly more will get you a 16 TB external Western Digital that you can shuck in less than 5 minutes. Somewhat insultingly, the Synology drive only comes with a 3-year warranty, too.
In our view, the big problem now is that there's not much incentive to buy a Synology device for SOHO use, since you'll be locked to the company's drives and their marked-up prices—not to mention added worry about Synology's supply chain and drive price stability, especially in these, tariffy times. Adding insult to injury, when it comes to SoCs and RAM, Synology devices are underpowered and generally trail the competition. As Patrick Kennedy from Serve The Home points out, even if you play Synology's game and build a meaty top-end array, its drive offerings cap out at 16 TB, while 26 TB Western Digital units are already in the market.
As someone who's recommended Synology NAS boxes to companies and friends (and helped configure a number of them), this move is quite hard understand, as suddenly I don't have many reasons to keep my recommendation, other than the ease of use of DSM. It's perfectly possible that Synology's higher-end, higher-margin units are selling so well that it's making money hand over fist in that market, and subsequently the company is okay with letting the lower-end and mainstream product lines fall by the wayside. Otherwise, this move seems like the company is shooting itself in the foot.
Owners of 2024 and earlier Synology units ought to remain unaffected. The company says its J-series and Value units with work fine with third-party drives and maintain their full feature set, but that's not much solace. If you're wondering about competing alternatives with support for arrays with dissimilar sized-drives, the only option in the market appears to be TerraMaster's TRAID/TRAID+.
Bad news for prospective Synology NAS buyers: the company is now making using its drives _de facto_ mandatory for Plus-series NAS boxes launched in 2025 and onwards. Vaguely citing compatibility issues, drive reliability, and ease of support as reasons, Synology's 2025 Plus units will have unspecified limitations on pool creation, even less monitoring, downgraded volume-wide duplication, and no drive lifespan analysis. This is the same restriction that already existed in its enterprise offerings.
This news will surely come as disappointement for existing and prospective customers (including yours truly), as the company had already limited SMART monitoring in contemporary versions of its DSM NAS operating system, a move that already seemed unjustifiably petty at the time. Allow us to establish some additional context. Synology's advantage over its competition has always been its excellent DSM software and its SHR feature.
Contrary to most other storage systems, in most scenarios SHR/SHR-2 can utilize almost all of the available space in an array of drives of dissimilar sizes. This has been a boon for cost-conscious home and SOHO users who don't wish to toss perfectly old drives (or drive space) away when it's time to expand their array, and prefer to buy bare drives or shuck external ones to keep cost low. Big businesses and enterprise users, on the other hand, can afford to just buy entire new sets of drives whenever they build or upgrade an array.
The big problem now is that there's not much incentive to buy a Synology unit for SOHO use, since you'll be locked to the company's drives and their marked-up price--not to mention added worry about Synology's supply chain and drive price stability, especially in these tarrify times. Additionally, when it came to SoCs and RAM, Synology devices are underpowered and has trail the competition. As Patrick Kennedy from Serve The Home points out, even if you play Synology's game and build a meaty top-end array, its drive offerings cap out at 16 TB, while 26 TB units are already in the market from at least Western Digital.
As someone who's recommended Synology NAS boxen to companies and friends (and helped configure a couple), this move is very hard understand, as suddenly I don't have many reasons to keep recommending these devices other than the ease of use of DSM. It's perfectly possible that Synology's higher-end, higher-margin units are selling so well that it's making money hand over fist in that arena, and subsequently is okay with letting the low-end gear fall by the wayside. Otherwise, this move feels like aiming a GAU-8 Avenger at one's foot and yelling "guns, guns guns!"
Owners of 2024 and earlier Synology units ought to remain unaffected. The company says its J-series and Value units likewise continue to not require Synology drives for their full feature set, but that's not much solace as these units are pretty limited.
