App to Add Incompatible Drives to Latest Synology NAS
Synology, as of April 2025, Synology announced newer models will have tighter restrictions on what drives can be used with NAS. It appears only the Synology branded drives are touted as “compatible”, albeit Synology, the company, does not manufacture any physical drives. The new policy will not retroactively affect older NAS, but seeing as Synology-branded NAS’ core strength was its streamlined experience regardless of drive compatibility, (i.e. even if a drive is not listed on the compatibility DB, it will still work on the unit) the new turn of the event ends on the rather sour note.
There is, however, a community driven effort to re-enable non-Synology drives, called Synology HDD db. As far as I’m aware, the script will effectively make DSM behave as it did before the policy was put in place. The only downside of it all, aside from the glaringly obvious not being officially supported, is that the script needs to be run again once there is a DSM update. The GitHub page does offer a plan B to set a scheduled task to run the script on boot.
Of course, I did see other reviewers and tech journalists trying to suggest alternatives to Synology. As much as I would like say vote with your wallets, Synology still has a strong case with streamlined experience and bigger community support. Home and small office is such a niche market, most NAS products I have seen either fail to deliver long term software support at all. If you wouldn’t mind undertaking some DIY projects, you could even build your own NAS, but that’s even more projects than migrating to a new product line entirely.
On Amazon, 8TB drives from Seagate and Western Digital are priced at $159.99 and $168.00, respectively, whereas Synology branded drive is priced at $199.99. While there is about 25% brand tax on Synology drives, for anyone who wishes to set it and forget it, it might be worthwhile to look for better deals for Synology drives. For anyone who is willing to put in some work, I believe the script really shows why having a large community is quintessential for an ecosystem. I hope Synology finds a better compromise between what it can offer and what it will restrict.