October, 2025
In early 2025, Synology sparked backlash by introducing strict drive compatibility rules on its new Plus-series NAS units. The company required users to install Synology-branded or officially certified hard drives and SSDs, warning that certain functions—like storage pool creation, health monitoring, and firmware updates—would be disabled with non-approved drives.
The move was widely criticized as an attempt to lock customers into Synology’s higher-priced drives and limit the flexibility that made its NAS systems popular.
Following strong community response, Synology reversed course later in the year with the release of DiskStation Manager (DSM) 7.3. The update restored full compatibility with third-party 3.5-inch HDDs and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs on 2025 Plus-series NAS models.
However, some restrictions remain—particularly for M.2 NVMe SSDs, which may still require Synology-approved models for use as storage volumes rather than cache.
For most users, this means that as long as DSM 7.3 or newer is installed, standard hard drives and SATA SSDs from major brands like Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba will again work normally in Synology’s latest NAS units.
In short: Synology listened, rolled back the most limiting changes, and restored flexibility for the majority of its users—at least for now.