Recent trends in the NAS market and general tech market has shown a propensity to lock down their devices to prevent you from using the device you paid for as you see fit. We at ASUSTOR do not believe in locking down your NAS device. As such, all ASUSTOR NAS devices come in an unlocked state. Today, ASUSTOR is announcing its intention to continue to maintain its devices in an unlocked state for maximum freedom.

Owning Your Products!
In recent years, companies across the tech industry have announced tighter and tighter vendor lock-in requirements that are largely arbitrary in nature. This has been in the form of putting software locks that disallow the use of unauthorized software or peripherals on devices you purchase with your hard earned money. Examples of this include companies forcing use of in-house branded hardware like hard drives in a NAS, locking out third party operating systems and apps not approved by the vendor This is part of a general trend towards disposable technology, vendor lock-in, planned obsolescence, and anti-consumer practices all at an unnecessary expense to you, the consumer. At ASUSTOR, we believe that you own the hardware you purchase, and as such, ASUSTOR NAS devices come in an unlocked state. ASUSTOR NAS devices do not place arbitrary restrictions on your use of the device, while using a non-approved drive on NAS devices with vendor lock-in policies can cause error messages or loss of features like building a RAID pool or knowledge of drive health and more.ASUSTOR tests numerous third party components for compatibility and maintains a compatibility list that helps ensure parts picked work well with the NAS for the best experience, but is not a list of approved drives. Any drive designed for the supported interfaces inside an ASUSTOR NAS should theoretically function inside an ASUSTOR NAS. Despite an inability to guarantee functionality for every drive on the market, ASUSTOR will not put arbitrary limits as to what drives you decide on using. ASUSTOR recommends using components on the compatibility list for a better experience, but does not believe in treating its customers like children.

Going Green
Another side effect of vendor lock-in is disposability. Because ASUSTOR NAS devices do not lock you in, this means longer longevity as there is no risk of losing functionality due to the termination of manufacturing of in-house drives. As long as drives are still being manufactured, your NAS will still be fully functional. ASUSTOR NAS devices also are unlocked for alternate operating systems, giving you full control over your device, even when hardware support ends, while ASUSTOR does not provide support for alternate operating systems, it still gives you the power to choose. This helps prevent unnecessary disposal of toxic materials into landfills, thereby creating more pollution, allowing all of us to create a greener planet for all.

It's Just About not Being Difficult
ASUSTOR believes that improving the experience is key to a good and holistic storage solution. Replaceable components like hard drives, SSDs, and RAM come in different speeds, capacities, and prices. Being locked into your device means that you have less choice as to how to customize your NAS which means, less opportunities to save money, save power, increase performance, or increase capacity. Sometimes availability is an issue and the specifications you want might not even be available. As an example, the largest hard drive on the market today is 36 TB while in-house drives of devices suffering from vendor lock-in may not be up to date with the latest technologies. This means on a ten bay ASUSTOR NAS, you'll be able to add 360 TB of storage while those devices suffering from vendor lock-in may not be able to use that much capacity due to their arbitrary limits. Due to this, we here at ASUSTOR don't believe in telling you how to use your devices and customer satisfaction always remains our number one priority.