Synology Forcing Owners of its Plus Series NAS Appliances to Use Own Brand Hard Drives

[TheLostSwede]

Last week Synology put out a press release on its European website, informing its customers that the Plus Series—which starts with simple two bay devices—will only support its own brand of hard drives, if you want to be able to take advantage of basic NAS features like creating a storage pool or do a lifespan analysis. More advanced features like volume-wide deduplication will also not be available. Synology has already done this on its XS Plus and rack mounted NAS appliances—which in itself wouldn't be acceptable to many considering getting a NAS—but at least these are pricier, high-end devices. Now the company has moved down to the $300 price bracket, which just doesn't sit right.

Admittedly this will only affect new customers, as the company will start to roll out the limitation with its 2025 SKUs and all other models will continue to work as is. The problem here is that Synology isn't a hard drive manufacturer and according to Arstechnica, the company is simply re-branding Toshiba hard drives and charges an extra $50 or so for their basic tier of drives, with higher-end tiers having a much higher premium. Synology obviously claims that this is for the benefit of their customers and you can find the full statement below. However, we doubt many customers will be happy to pay extra for something that was working just fine, until Synology figured out it could charge its customers extra for it. For now, there has been no indication that this will happen outside of the European market, but it's likely to be rolled out globally, as something like this is rarely limited to one market.




Following the success of the high-performance series, the company is now also increasingly relying on Synology's own storage media for the Plus series models to be released from 2025. As a result, users will benefit from higher performance, increased reliability and more efficient support.

"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. "By extending our integrated ecosystem to the Plus Series, we aim to provide all users - from home users to small businesses - with the highest levels of security, performance, and significantly more efficient support."

For users, this means that starting with Plus Series models released in 2025, 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.

Plus models released up to and including 2024 (excluding XS Plus series and rack models) will not change. In addition, the migration of hard disks from existing Synology NAS to a new Plus model will continue to be possible without restrictions.
The use of compatible and unlisted hard disks will be subject to certain restrictions 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. Volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic firmware updates of hard disks will only be available for Synology hard disks in the future.

The tight integration of Synology NAS systems and hard disks will reduce compatibility issues and increase system reliability and performance. At the same time, firmware updates and security patches can be provided more efficiently to ensure a high level of data security and more efficient support for Synology customers.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[freeagent]

I have no need for a NAS.. right now.. but to me this sounds like boooooo.

Thumbs down.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I have no need for a NAS.. right now.. but to me this sounds like boooooo.

Thumbs down.

I guess it's a way to get reoccurring income, but it's not a good way when there's as much competition as there is in the NAS market.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

If their own branded drives are just flashed Toshibas with a markup, I imagine it will just be a matter of time before someone figures out how to pull the firmware and flash Toshiba drives to pass the test.

Reminds me of the Xbox 360/One artificial storage upgrade limitations. It just made PlayStation more appealing.

 

[yfn_ratchet]

What a heavy concentration of BS. It's making my head spin.

I can understand offering 'Synology Certified' drives or even white-labeled stuff in order to offer your customers specific performance, integrity, or warranty guarantees. You use the hardware they approve of, they can offer you an expected, known-good result and certain protections when disaster occurs. That is fine. What is not fine is restricting the basic functionality of the device unless a user pays significant premiums for that hardware. Say you can't provide data recovery services under warranty with unsupported drives, whatever, I know what I'm signing up for, but pulling this sort of horseshit is what should bury you.

At least TerraMaster has the grace to let you use the device as-is.

 

[kondamin]

Sounds like I need to write to some eu parlementarians and consumer protection agencies.

this is an unacceptable move.

 

[Steevo]

Laughs in 24TB server storage internally.

 

[Bagerklestyne]

I'm currently on my 3rd Synology since jumping into the ecosystem about a decade back.

If I am forced to use their drives (as in total lock out, not simply some advanced rubbish features) I'll be migrating elsewhere.

As much as I like the software, the hardware is visually polished but middle ground for the price and their go to response for tech support is to have remote access to your device.

Given my next upgrade is likely to run north of 100TB the additional charges on drives that essentially add nothing to my use case model make it a hard sell at best and a shop elsewhere more likely.

 

[piloponth]

Another example of enshitification. Vote with your wallet.

 

[DaemonForce]

Absolute trash decision and I hope this burns Synology and their conspirators badly.
People may be dumb and looking for the convenient solution but the competition is literal eWaste.
This is why I dunk on these dumbass solutions every time there's an issue with their appliances and pricing model.
You don't lock your customers into some in-house rebrand of HDD. That's not how data works.
Those non-enterprise consumers will be all the worse when some errant "net virus" (read: firmware update) takes out their entire data store.

The antique eMachines just can't stop winning.

The customers that actually need to know all of this won't find it until problems show up so all we can do is hope they ask around first.
Maybe these normies will actually talk to someone aware of this predatory noise in the NAS market and they'll actually warn them.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Shit like this should be illegal.

 

[Crackong]

Synology 2025:

1. More expensive
2. Still using 2019 era hardware
3. No more 10G upgrade slot
4. Locks to Synology brand HDD/SSD only

 

[Panther_Seraphin]

Synology trying to Copy the Printer manufactures secret sauce to profits

£312 for a 16tb on Synology site for their Plus series drives
£216 for a 16th Seagate Ironwolf Pro from Seagates Amazon store

 

[Chaitanya]

Synology 2025:

1. More expensive
2. Still using 2019 era hardware
3. No more 10G upgrade slot
4. Locks to Synology brand HDD/SSD only

You forgot their insistance on still using 1Gbps NICs while at it.

 

[Arkz]

I have a synology NAS for one reason, it was given to me for free.

Were I to want a new one I'd just build something with FreeNAS

 

[Crackong]

You forgot their insistance on still using 1Gbps NICs while at it.

ahh that.
They changed it to 2.5G now , what an 'Upgrade'

 

[watzupken]

This is how you wreak the company by forcing clients to buy pricier options with no value add. For reliability, the company can simply test in-house and provide a white list of validated drives. Forcing customers to buy pricier drives when they don’t manufacture the drives themselves is clearly coming from a profit angle.

 

[Bagerklestyne]

I went with a Syno because I wanted wanted a hotswap raid 6 device with a minimal power footprint. My old server was a tank (built in a server case from the 486 years) and used nearly twice the power.

When I bought in the Syno was roughly the same price as a small form factor 8 bay device with hot swap and raid 6 capability but saved me in power bills as well, but with a fairly robust and pre-curated os.

 

[user556]

Ink cartridges for inkjet printers comes to mind. Once all manufacturers follow suit, it's a great way to massively shrink the size of the overall market. Very much an own-goal.

 

[Bwaze]

I wonder if this isn't just diverting the focus from consumer sector, simplifying it? Since they have seen growth in other sectors, and apparently shrinkage here. People are less and less relying on home storage, everything is now cloud (someone else's computer) based... I wonder if we'll also see reduced number of models.

 

[TPUnique]

Shit like this should be illegal.

It could probably be in most European markets, actually, if it is found the company has a dominant position (potentially) and is abusing it (clearly the case).
MS and Apple have been forced to unbundle some of their offers, so the same could apply to Synology.

In the meantime, if I were in the market for a pre-built NAS, I'd look into Asustor. They even tell you how to install other OSes like Unraid on their hardware.

 

[Rightness_1]

It's only a matter of time before they do this to the rest of the "consumer" range too. I'd never buy one now because there is nothing stopping them from "upgrading" the OS at some point and forcing you to only use their drives one day.

 

[Breit]

Shady move. At least there are great options in the market.

 

[SN2716057]

I wonder if using a script [link] will circumvent this 'error'.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I wonder if this isn't just diverting the focus from consumer sector, simplifying it? Since they have seen growth in other sectors, and apparently shrinkage here. People are less and less relying on home storage, everything is now cloud (someone else's computer) based... I wonder if we'll also see reduced number of models.

Considering that the cost of cloud storage is going up at the same rate that streaming services are, we might see a renaissance for home storage. You get lured in with some free space or a very low starting cost for a small-ish amount of storage, which I guess is fine for most, but once you start backing up your photos etc. that 100 GB or whatever you have, is gone quite quickly. Sure a NAS is a much bigger initial outlay, but if you need a few TB, it's soon going to be worth the cost, especially if you want faster access to your files.