Synology’s drive-locking policy for home devices triggers public outcry

Synology, a major network-attached storage (NAS) manufacturer, plans to restrict its 2025 appliances to branded hard drives. The controversial move has ignited public outcry: users and experts are disappointed that the company is choosing profits over user choice and flexibility.

Synology has announced plans to limit full features on its upcoming NAS units to only its own hard drives.

NAS solutions are widely used as file servers, data backups, multimedia hubs, productivity solutions for syncing documents, and virtual machine hosts. Synology’s NAS products are valued among home and business users due to their user-friendly interface, robust features, and integrations.

For the upcoming Plus series NAS models, “only Synology's own hard drives and third-party hard drives certified to Synology's specifications will be compatible and offer the full range of features and support,” the company said in a press release.

In the future, third-party hard disks will no longer have access to volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic firmware updates.

Synology also mentions other “certain restrictions” that might affect devices in the future, such as “the creation of pools and support in the event of problems and malfunctions caused by the use of incompatible storage media.”

The firm is positioning the tight integration as a way to “reduce compatibility issues and increase system reliability and performance.”

"With our proprietary hard disk solution, we have already seen significant benefits for our customers in various deployment scenarios,” says Chad Chiang, Managing Director of Synology GmbH and Synology UK.

“We aim to provide all users – from home users to small businesses – with the highest levels of security, performance, and significantly more efficient support.”

Users are not happy

Some popular reviewers, such as servethehome.com, condemned the company’s decision and even suspended recommendations for Synology hardware. The move has also sparked a heated discussion among hundreds of professionals on the Hacker News forum.

“Enforcing this across models used by home or SOHO users is dumb and will affect the goodwill of so many like me, who both used to buy Synology for home and were also recommending/purchasing the brand at work,” one user noted.

Higher pricing and slow delivery estimates, as well as the inability to quickly replace failed drives, are the main concerns.

However, Synology doesn’t produce storage drives on a scale to compete with major manufacturers. The company sells certified SATA HDDs, NVMe SSDs, and other storage devices under its brand, “designed for Synology systems.”

“Health report of hard drives is indispensable for both private use and in the professional segment,” hardwareluxx.de noted.

ServeTheHome noted that Synology offers maximum drive capacity capped at 16TB (128TB in 8‑bay), compared to competitors’ 26TB (208TB).

“While I actually like the company’s software, Synology’s NAS hardware feels extremely dated to the point that it feels like most of the solutions are running generations-old hardware. The combination of neglecting hardware refresh cycles and now vendor locking features to only using Synology drives will ultimately hurt users,” the reviewer said.

Some users on Ycombinator are also considering transitioning to other solutions, such as QNAP or TrueNAS.

“I don’t like all this stuff with vendor lock-in, so when the time comes to replace the box, what are alternatives on par with the experience and quality I currently have with Synology?” one user asked.

After the publication, Synology provided an additional comment to Cybernews:

“As Synology continues to develop solutions for a wide range of users and business environments, we’re constantly evaluating how to deliver the best possible balance of performance, stability, and long-term maintainability.

With some of our upcoming Plus Series models, we’ve introduced closer alignment between hardware and software components. The aim is to simplify support, improve system diagnostics, and reduce the risk of unforeseen compatibility issues — particularly as workloads and expectations evolve.

We understand that this has generated a variety of reactions in the community, and we truly value the feedback we’ve received. While we don’t have specific updates to share beyond our current announcement, we’re carefully listening and taking the broader conversation into account as we move forward.”

Updated on April 23rd [11:30 a.m. GMT] with a statement from Synology.