Synology Wisely U-Turns On Third-Party HDD And SSD Storage Support After Backlash

Earlier this year, Synology made headlines for all the wrong reasons when it announced it would be limiting support for third-party drives in its 2025 NAS lineup. Following months of backlash, however, a new update has mostly reversed this decision, to the relief of Synology owners and prospective buyers everywhere.

Previously, Synology argued that its restrictions were being made to improve reliability of its NAS devices, since it found in its own benchmarking that third-party drives were more prone to failure, but Synology is also using tweaked, rebranded OEM drives anyway—they are not manufacturing unique drives. This means that a number of HDDs and SSDs being sold by Synology at a significant markup are mechanically identical to competitive options from Seagate and other manufacturers. With that in mind, many criticized this move as a shameless cash grab before Synology reversed course.


Well, mostly reversed course, anyway. There are still limitations to consider. Officially, this policy reversal only applies to 2025 DiskStation Plus, Value, and J Series NAS units once the latest Version 7.3-81180 DSM update has been installed—older devices and enterprise models in the XS+ line still have the same restrictions. Additionally, M.2 drives are still restricted to first-party drives on the official Compatibility List, though Synology claims that it is working to "accelerate the testing and verification of additional storage drives" to validate other drives as compatible.

While this is good news, it doesn't solve the problems people now have with the brand. Fortunately for Synology, enterprise users have been pretty used to restrictions like this courtesy of other big tech companies, so the likelihood that users of the higher-end NAS solutions will just shell out the extra cash and not sweat it. But for home users and enthusiasts, drive compatibility only being loosened up for non-M.2 drives on 2025 units is sure to be seen as a half-step, and may still result in people pivoting to other solutions instead.

That said, it is nice that Synology is stepping back from the ledge and trying to make its products more user friendly. The full Synology blog post does at least show they're trying, but only time will tell if the brand will fully bounce back from this misstep.