Synology is set to artificially limit HDD compatibility for NAS systems in its Plus series. To enjoy full functionality, customers will need to purchase hard drives from Synology itself.
Synology will artificially restrict the compatibility of NAS systems in the Plus range, launched from 2025 onwards. The popular NAS manufacturer announces that functionality of the DiskStation Manager operating system will be limited when the NAS detects drives not listed on an official compatibility list.
That list won’t be very extensive. The manufacturer explicitly refers to limited functions unless Synology’s own hard drives are in the NAS. “Volume-level deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic HDD firmware updates will only be available for Synology HDDs in the future,” it states.
Other capabilities will also be restricted, such as creating storage pools. It’s unclear whether this functionality will remain available for approved HDDs from external manufacturers.
Synology HDDs are manufactured by Toshiba. Mechanically, they are identical to Toshiba drives, but Synology claims to optimize the firmware. The drives are, in any case, more expensive than equivalents from HDD manufacturers Toshiba, WD, or Seagate. By limiting compatibility and using the ecosystem to promote their own drives, Synology is pushing customers towards higher costs.
Following the Enterprise Path
Synology first introduced this artificial restriction in the Enterprise segment. There, the manufacturer has been requiring customers to buy hard drives with a Synology label for several years, supposedly to provide better support. Synology presents customers who dare to use an HDD from, for example, Seagate or Western Digital with a large orange warning sign on their dashboard.
The manufacturer claimed at the time that the restriction would only apply to the Enterprise segment. “We have indeed released our own enterprise HDDs,” said Victor Wang, Managing Director of Synology in France in 2022. “With emphasis on enterprise.” Wang stated that it was not the intention to implement the requirement for devices aimed at smaller customers. The Plus series, which includes entry-level 2-bay devices, should have remained unaffected.
Now that restriction is coming after all. It’s not clear whether Synology will implement the future compatibility restriction as aggressively as in the enterprise segment, frightening orange ball included, or if the functional limitations will be smaller and more in the background.
Difficult Justification
It’s also notable that the justification is quite shaky. Synology points to a multitude of drives and the need to maintain control. In practice, there are hardly any HDD manufacturers left, with Seagate and Western Digital as the only really big players, and Toshiba as a smaller third. The big players, in turn, have a clear NAS series: Seagate Ironwolf and WD Red.
The manufacturer likely doesn’t spend less effort developing its own firmware for drives than it would cost not to do so and simply support Ironwolf and Red. At one point, there was even a collaboration with Seagate for the close integration of Ironwolf in the DSM operating system, which seemed to work well for a while.
Enterprise-level server manufacturers, which Synology likes to compare itself to, do not impose such artificial restrictions. In the NAS segment where the Plus series is positioned, competitor Qnap doesn’t do this either.
Moreover, Synology literally states that it will remain possible to migrate non-compatible drives from an older system to a newer one. Suddenly, the HDDs are still compatible, but not when you start with a clean slate.
Consumers Are Not Happy
“Consumers are a valuable source of knowledge and feedback for us to improve our products,” Wang said in 2022. The feedback from that corner for the HDD restriction has been exclusively negative since its introduction for models Synology labeled as Enterprise. Since then, the company has taken other poorly received measures, such as discontinuing Video Station and HEVC compatibility.
In the Reddit pages about Synology, where prosumers actively gather, the new limitation is almost unanimously poorly received, with more than 400 uncomprehending comments across various threads. The sentiment that Synology is abandoning consumers predominates.
Walls for Margins
“Close integration of Synology NAS systems and hard drives reduces compatibility issues and improves system stability and performance,” Synology itself says. “At the same time, it’s possible to roll out firmware updates and security patches more efficiently, ensure high-level data security, and provide more efficient support for Synology customers.”
In practice, it seems that Synology would rather have its engineers invest time in firmware for its own HDDs, where it captures margins itself, than maintain the open ecosystem through which the company has grown.