Synology vs UGREEN in 2025 – Which Should You Buy?

Last updated on 26 Apr 2025 📧 Subscribe
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1 Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Which One Deserves Your Money and Your Data?
2 Synology vs UGREEN NAS Hardware Compared
3 Synology DSM vs UGREEN UGOS NAS Software & Services
4 Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Security
5 Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Pricing and Value
6 Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Verdict & Conclusion
7 Need Advice on Data Storage from an Expert?

Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Which One Deserves Your Money and Your Data?

In the evolving world of network-attached storage (NAS), users in 2025 are faced with a broader range of choices than ever before. Among the most discussed options in both professional and enthusiast communities are Synology and UGREEN. Synology has been a mainstay in the industry for over two decades, known for its reliable software, long-term support, and deeply integrated ecosystem. UGREEN, by contrast, is a relative newcomer to the NAS market in the West, but has quickly established itself as a serious contender by offering competitive hardware and pricing. Originally known for consumer tech peripherals, UGREEN has leveraged its manufacturing experience and market agility to carve out space in an area traditionally dominated by established NAS brands.

This comparison aims to provide a clear, unbiased overview of both brands, structured across several key categories: hardware capabilities, storage flexibility, software ecosystem, security infrastructure, pricing strategy, and overall value proposition. While some buyers may lean toward a brand due to legacy, others are driven by performance-per-dollar, or openness to customization. It’s important to understand that neither brand is objectively “better” in all respects. Instead, each appeals to different user priorities. What follows is a breakdown of how Synology and UGREEN compare across the board, giving potential buyers the tools they need to make a decision that aligns with their use case, technical comfort level, and long-term plans.

Synology vs UGREEN NAS Hardware Compared 

Synology’s hardware lineup spans everything from small 1-bay entry-level NAS units to rackmount enterprise-class systems with dual controllers. With approximately 15–25 models available at any given time, the variety on offer is extensive. This allows users to choose systems that align closely with their needs—whether that’s for simple backups, media streaming, virtualization, or business-critical data management. However, despite the breadth of its portfolio, Synology’s consumer and SMB offerings are frequently criticized for underpowered processors and limited upgrade paths. Many of their mid-tier models still rely on AMD Embedded or lower-end Intel chips, and memory configurations are often modest compared to similarly priced alternatives. PCIe expansion, 10GbE networking, and true Flash storage support are typically reserved for only the highest-tier devices.

UGREEN, on the other hand, has entered the NAS space with a clear emphasis on hardware strength. Their NASync series—although more limited in model variety—delivers high-performance components out of the box. Even in models priced around $1,100 to $1,200 USD, UGREEN includes features like Intel i5 processors, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, dual 10GbE ports, USB4, SD card slots, and Thunderbolt connectivity. Most of specifications are generally only found in Synology’s XS or SA series, which can cost double or triple the price. In terms of build quality, UGREEN’s enclosures also lean toward a more robust, enterprise-like design with better thermal management and port selection. While they may not yet offer the same portfolio depth or high-end rackmount solutions, the raw hardware value they deliver—especially for power users and media professionals—is difficult to overlook.

Synology DSM vs UGREEN UGOS NAS Software & Services

Storage features and flexibility represent one of the most contested areas between the two brands. Synology has developed a very feature-rich storage management system over the years, offering support for RAID configurations, Btrfs and EXT4 file systems, fast RAID rebuilds, advanced iSCSI LUN management, and deep integration with backup and synchronization tools.

File Services SMB/NFS/AFP/WebDAV ✅ Supported ✅ Supported (AFP not confirmed) Core protocols available
iSCSI Support ✅ Native iSCSI manager ❌ Not currently supported Important for VM/block-level storage
RAID & Storage RAID 0/1/5/6/10, SHR ✅ SHR and traditional RAID ✅ Traditional RAID 0/1/5/6/10 No SHR support in UGREEN
Snapshots ✅ Btrfs-based with GUI versioning ✅ Btrfs-based snapshots Comparable snapshot system
Deduplication ✅ Btrfs-based ❌ Planned, not available yet UGREEN roadmap feature
Encryption ✅ Volume/folder/drive-level + WORM ❌ No integrated encryption Major security difference
SSD Caching ✅ GUI-managed ✅ CLI-managed only (UI planned) Limited interface currently

Their platform also supports drive pooling, storage tiering (in some models), and robust snapshot capabilities. Expansion options are a strong point too, with a range of proprietary expansion units that allow users to scale storage well beyond the original NAS chassis. These are bolstered by robust utilities in DSM that help manage redundancy, performance, and data recovery, all while maintaining consistency across the ecosystem.

However, Synology’s 2025 policy shift around hard drive compatibility introduces a significant caveat. Newer devices now strictly require Synology-branded drives for both HDD and SSD roles, including caching and storage pools. This effectively locks users into the Synology ecosystem and limits the ability to use commonly available alternatives from WD, Seagate, Samsung, and others. Availability issues in some regions further complicate this approach.

UGREEN, conversely, supports a far more open system—allowing users to populate their NAS devices with nearly any 2.5″, 3.5″, or NVMe drive on the market. With support for drives up to 24TB and Gen 4 NVMe speeds reaching 6,000–7,000 MB/s, UGREEN offers unmatched flexibility in storage media. However, their systems currently lack support for iSCSI and official expansion units, which could be a limitation for more advanced storage scenarios.

Software Comparison

Synology’s DiskStation Manager (DSM) is widely regarded as one of the most refined and mature NAS operating systems in the market. Backed by over two decades of development, DSM offers a wide range of first-party apps covering backup, multimedia, productivity, collaboration, and virtualization.

Tools like Synology Drive, Active Backup for Business, and Synology Photos provide enterprise-grade capabilities in a consumer-friendly package. The platform also integrates with cloud services like Office 365 and Google Workspace, and includes support for SANs, VMs, containers, and cloud sync. Importantly, most of these apps are license-free, representing significant value over time. The application center in DSM is extensive, and Synology’s desktop and mobile client tools are similarly well-developed.

Category Feature Synology UGREEN NASync (DXP Series) Notes
Core OS OS DSM (DiskStation Manager) UGOS Synology has a mature, polished UI
Mobile Apps ✅ Multiple DS apps across iOS/Android ✅ One core management app + FireTV/Google Home apps Broader app suite on Synology
Virtualization & Containers Virtual Machines ✅ Virtual Machine Manager ✅ Dedicated VM app Both platforms now offer VMs
Docker Support ✅ GUI + Docker CLI ✅ Portainer + Docker CLI Equal container support
GPU Passthrough ❌ Not available ❌ Not supported Neither platform offers this
AI & Surveillance AI Services ✅ Facial/people detection on DVA NAS ✅ Advanced AI model recognition (Photo AI) UGREEN offers more AI model types
Surveillance Suite ✅ Surveillance Station (native) ❌ No native system (use Frigate, MotionEye via Docker) Docker-based alternative
Media & Streaming Plex Media Server ✅ Native app support ✅ Docker-only installation Equal in function
Jellyfin ❌ Docker/homebrew only ✅ Native app available More flexible on UGREEN
Video App ❌ Video Station is EOL ✅ Native video player app UGREEN actively supports this
Backup & Sync Backup Solutions ✅ Hyper Backup, Active Backup Suite ✅ Rsync, SMB, Cloud Backup, USB GUI edge to Synology
Cloud Sync ✅ Native Cloud Sync app ❌ Planned, rclone CLI workaround only Still in development
Remote Access DDNS + Tunnel ✅ QuickConnect ✅ UGREEN-hosted tunnel system Functional equivalents
App Ecosystem App Center ✅ Extensive with many native packages ✅ Real app center, but much smaller Synology has a broader catalog
Package Manager ✅ synopkg ✅ APT + Docker

UGREEN’s UGOS, by contrast, is still in its early stages—at least in the Western market—but has made notable progress. Built on a Linux-based open-source foundation, UGOS offers a modern UI and essential features like RAID management, Docker support, virtualization, remote access, and media streaming. The system is responsive and user-friendly, with most core NAS functions well-covered.

UGREEN’s App Center is less populated but growing, and the brand has made particular strides in AI-driven features—particularly in its photo application, which allows customizable object and face recognition with trainable AI modules. While still lacking some advanced enterprise features like Synology’s iSCSI or SAN support, UGOS is impressive for a brand with only a few years of development. Notably, UGREEN also supports the installation of third-party operating systems like TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault, appealing to users who want full control over their NAS.

Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Security 

When it comes to security, Synology’s long-standing reputation and infrastructure give it a distinct advantage. Over the years, the company has invested heavily in platform hardening, threat detection, and vulnerability response. The built-in Security Advisor not only scans for malware and viruses but also detects weak passwords, outdated software, open ports, and potentially exploitable system configurations. Synology participates in vulnerability disclosure programs, works with penetration testers, and maintains a public-facing security advisory database. They’ve even implemented a bounty system to reward ethical hackers for reporting vulnerabilities. These layers of proactive defense have earned Synology its reputation as one of the most secure NAS platforms in the world.

UGREEN has not experienced any public security incidents as of 2025, but its shorter time in the market means less historical data on its resilience. Their systems now include two-factor authentication and basic malware scanning, but currently lack the more comprehensive vulnerability detection tools that Synology provides. The security advisor in UGOS focuses primarily on active threats like viruses rather than system-level hardening.

That said, UGREEN has been responsive to user feedback and appears committed to improving its security infrastructure. For experienced users who follow best practices and secure their networks effectively, this may not be a deal-breaker. However, for enterprise users or those deploying systems in high-risk environments, Synology’s mature security ecosystem provides more peace of mind.

Remote Access DDNS + Tunnel ✅ QuickConnect ✅ UGREEN-hosted tunnel system Functional equivalents
Security & Access Security Advisor ✅ Ransomware, audit, malware, system hardening ❌ Basic malware scanning only Synology offers deeper protections
VPN Server ✅ Native UI for OpenVPN, L2TP, PPTP ✅ Docker-based VPNs (WireGuard, OpenVPN) Manual setup on UGREEN
SSL Certificates ✅ Let’s Encrypt + GUI ✅ Let’s Encrypt via Web UI Parity here
2FA Support ✅ App-based 2FA ✅ TOTP/Web 2FA Both support 2FA login

Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Pricing and Value 

Pricing is one of the most decisive factors favoring UGREEN in 2025. The brand offers high-performance hardware at price points that undercut Synology by a substantial margin. An 8-bay UGREEN NAS with an Intel i5 CPU, 16GB DDR5 RAM, dual 10GbE, and Thunderbolt can be purchased for roughly $1,200-1300 (store depending). A Synology unit with similar specs would require jumping to the DS1823xs+ or even the SA series—devices that retail between $1,800 and $3,000 depending on configuration and region. This gap in price-performance makes UGREEN especially appealing to users who want modern hardware for tasks like 4K video editing, large-scale backups, or AI analytics but can’t justify enterprise-level spending.

Synology’s pricing strategy is rooted more in its software and long-term value. While the upfront cost may be higher, the investment is offset by an integrated ecosystem, professional-grade applications, and superior long-term support. For some buyers, particularly businesses and advanced home users who need software stability and vendor accountability, the price premium is justified. However, for price-sensitive consumers, hobbyists, or those comfortable managing their own systems, UGREEN’s value proposition is hard to beat. It’s also worth noting that UGREEN’s openness to third-party operating systems can further extend the device’s utility without adding cost, whereas Synology systems are heavily locked into their proprietary software environment. Here is a comparison of the Synology DS1823xs+ and the UGREEN DXP8800 PLUS NAS. Around $449 difference, but also the general level of the hardware inside and externally is technically higher on the UGREEN system. That said, the Synology system software does a huge amount with it’s software, keeping things super efficient. So, now let’s discuss storage and the respective software that both of these platforms offer to house and protect your data.

Synology vs UGREEN NAS – Verdict & Conclusion

Choosing between Synology and UGREEN in 2025 ultimately comes down to what matters most to the user. Synology is the more mature and refined platform, with a rock-solid software ecosystem, strong security credentials, and long-standing industry credibility. It is ideal for users who want a fully integrated solution with minimal tinkering, extensive app support, and professional-grade backup, synchronization, and collaboration tools. However, the brand’s increasing restrictions on drive compatibility, slower hardware updates, and higher prices may discourage users seeking flexibility or better raw performance.

UGREEN, while newer and still building out its software platform, delivers excellent hardware value and impressive flexibility for the price. It supports a wide range of third-party drives, offers strong virtualization and AI capabilities, and even allows OS replacement—making it highly appealing to power users and technologists. While it may not yet match Synology in software maturity or enterprise security, it is evolving rapidly and clearly resonates with a growing segment of the NAS market. For buyers focused on hardware, performance, and freedom of customization, UGREEN may be the better choice today. For those seeking long-term support, stable software, and enterprise-grade functionality, Synology still sets the benchmark across the rest of the NAS industry in terms of providing an all covering solution, though there is no denying that buyers are getting a little more cost aware. Synology clearly has it’s eyes on bigger prizes right now, and perhaps this is a growing gap in the market that UGREEN is eying up – knife and fork in hand!

NAS Solutions

NAS Solutions
+ Better Software (In almost every respect!)

+ Much Better Global Support Presence

+ More More business desirable

+ Larger Range of solutions

– Compatibility restrictions on HDD and Upgrades More and more

– Underwhelming hardware (comparatively)

 + Better Hardware for Price

+ Flexibility to Install 3rd Party OS’

+ Excellent Mobile Application

+ Wide accessory compatibility

– Software still has beta elements

– The company has a much shorter NAS Market Experience

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      612 thoughts on “Synology vs UGREEN in 2025 – Which Should You Buy?”

      1. The issue isn’t that their drives are encouraged for ‘better reliability and easier diagnostic’ reasons, it’s that the third party drives are soft-locked out of features that are expected in a NAS. So drive health stats are only a feature if you buy Synology drives. F off Synology.

        Edit: There’s also no practical reasoning why a handful of third party haven’t been tested either. They just want us to buy theirs are couldn’t come up with competitive advantages to buy theirs so made everyone else’s worse. Scum move.
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      3. Finally someone mention the Synology software ! Of course I can have better spec with Ugreen and self made NAS, but Do i have Active backup, Synology Drive and Photos, Hyperbackup, snapshot etc out of the box without any tweaking ? No, so to me and a lot of people who value their data Synology is still the best
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      5. Synology is kinda sleeping just like Intel. Most upcomming competitors have much better hardware and better upgrade ability. Granted no doubt that Synology’s software is their selling point, but really they suck in the lower end, and locking people to their own certified drives and add-on cards doesn’t help them either as they ARE considerably more expensive than just buying some eg seagate EXOS drives and their SSD’s is so OLD tech and still expensive as hell. They keep shifting between the absolute lowest grade cpu’s for their standard home a small office models which is often not able to support hardware encoding, and for the smaller models you can’t even upgrade them with a decent network or gpu card. They are mainly not worth the money you spent on them unless you work with the pro series where the cost often doesn’t mean so much if the features provided fits your needs.
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      6. I’m curious about a comprehensive docker comparison and if ugreen has reverse proxy support for creating domains like sonarr.local.lan that points to ds.local.lan:65438 for example.
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      9. I’m considering UGreen for when my Synology boxes go belly up, but would first want to see how it will handle native Tailscale support on UGOS (not through Docker or reimaging with TrueNAS/Unraid), and how it handles as a ONVIF camera NVR. Synology for all its shenanigans lately have an established reputation with both these applications.
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      13. Can you make a video comparing the ugreen operating system and the truenas scale operating system? I’m thinking about buying the ugreen dxp8800 and I’d like to know which is the best system to install. What are the advantages and disadvantages between one and the other… Can you make a video about this comparison? What do the followers of this channel think about this subject and opinions/answers to the questions I asked? Best regards
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      18. Will the new Synology NAS bypass the manufacturer lock if the hard drives have been moved from the old device to the new one? If this is true, then the restriction is completely software-based, which is checked when a new RAID is created or a new disk is installed. Of course, this requires an old working Synology NAS device.
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      19. You are repeatedly bringing up iscsi support, sometimes to justify that “Synology has a richer feature set” or “is more flexible”. I wonder though how many users would even know that their Synology NAS supports iscsi. I wouldn’t be surprised if the percentage was less than 3%. It doesn’t seem relevant for the vast majority of users, hence the generalising statements built on that mostly irrelevant feature are not justified.
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      20. It’s not a contest anymore in 2025. Synology went crazy with all the hardware lock in (network adapters, hard drives, SSDs, to name just a few), took away features one has already paid for (codecs, USB drivers), and offers underpowered hardware (lacking transcoding support and performance) for inflated prices. Too bad, but I won’t be buying another Synology NAS in the future.
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      27. I’m directly in the market for an 8-Bay NAS and have been directly looking at the DXP8800 Plus but because I’m in Australia, I just can’t get one locally. I really wish that UGreen sold these NAS’ locally down here. It’s like the perfect unit that I’m after and can’t buy it. Poop.
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      28. looking for a NAS that have office suite apps built in like Synology Office and Google Workspace… most NAS already does NAS stuff… so having the cloud office apps makes for a more complete private cloud solution
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      29. For me the main topic is, and always will be, security. I think UGREEN has still some work to do to get close to Synology. And to be honest, I will never ever trust a Chinese company.
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      30. I only use my Synology for Plex so Ugreen will work but, I’ll wait until they use CPUs with native AV1 10bit 4k encode ideally from AMD like the 8000 series but worst come to worst 14th gen Core chips.
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      32. I got a Synology DS920+ 4 years ago because of this channel, and it has been working great. When that guy kicks the bucket, I think UGREEN will be the way to go.
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      33. I’ve been running Synology NAS in various guises since 2013 – I’ve never looked elsewhere before. But we have to vote with our feet and with our money when companies do things we don’t like.

        Must admit I’m seriously considering a move over to UGreen – they look compelling for my use case.
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      37. Ugreen specs are better, but how is the actual performance? I see some reviews saying UGOS is a pig when compared to DSM performing equivalent tasks and operations. ????
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      38. I would buy the ugreen if it were available in my area, since it isn’t I will build my next NAS. Synology is no longer viable due to drive lock-in.
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      40. Impressive comparison! Would like to see the same with Synology and QNAP, Asustore, Terramastet and even Unifi. Good timing since so many are looking at alternatives right now.
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      41. Impressive comparison! Would like to see the same with Synology and QNAP, Asustore, Terramastet and even Unifi. Good timing since so many are looking at alternatives right now.
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      44. Short answer, don’t get either. Ugreen is notoriously bad… their stuff fails constantly. Their gantt changers, especially the 300W ones usually fail within 2 years out of the blue. Their cables fail, and I wouldn’t entrust my data to a company with that track-record. Synology is just overpriced crap, and you’ll be forced to get Synology branded drives soon or the nAS will become a very expensive brick. Skip this vid.
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      45. Short answer, don’t get either. Ugreen is notoriously bad… their stuff fails constantly. Their gantt changers, especially the 300W ones usually fail within 2 years out of the blue. Their cables fail, and I wouldn’t entrust my data to a company with that track-record. Synology is just overpriced crap, and you’ll be forced to get Synology branded drives soon or the nAS will become a very expensive brick. Skip this vid.
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      46. One thing that always amazes me Rob, is how much of a “pass” you seem to keep wanting to give Synology, mostly due to DSM. It’s so funny to me to “listen to your words” in this video (and others) as almost always you end every UGreen feature sentence with “but…”. It seems like it’s so hard for you to just give UGreen a compliment and just stop there. You almost always have to follow it up with some type of negative comment. On the other hand whenever you’re speaking about Synology and you bring up something negative about them, you always follow up with something positive to say about them, and mostly related to DSM. Whether you mean to or not, you definitely seem to come across as a “Synology Fan Boy.” Synology is clearly SHOUTING they don’t want to be the #1 “consumer” nas anymore, and yet you keep trying to hold them in that #1 spot. Month after month, model after model Synology continues to become less and less consumer friendly / focused. They’ve made it very clear they are moving more in the direction of being a resource for businesses, not home consumers… yet so many of you refuse to “let go.”

        No one disagrees that the Synology App Store has “the most apps” of any other NAS brand, but quite frankly not everyone needs six versions of a backup program or four versions of ??, or five versions of ??, etc. etc.. “More” doesn’t always mean better. Also, there are just so many things in the DSM Store that many average user/new NAS user just don’t even need or use.

        We’re not a monolith or homogenous group of consumers. We all have one basic common need that we share, which is the need for storage space. Outside of that, the variations of what people do with their home server is so wide and diversified that no one brand, including Synology is a perfect fit for everyone.

        As you mentioned, Synology is the oldest brand! At 25 years old, they should be SOOO far ahead or EVERY manufacture the market today, but the cold facts are, they are not… and that’s by choice. With only being on the market for just 1 year (in the west), the fact that you’re making a comparison video between UGreen and Synology clearly speaks to just how far behind the competition Synology is falling… by the hour. Time to let it go my friend. They are not the brand they used to be…. and the quicker we all accept that, the quicker we can invest our hard earn dollars into new market entrants like UGreen, etc. to far exceed Synology & DSM.
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      47. One thing that always amazes me Rob, is how much of a “pass” you seem to keep wanting to give Synology, mostly due to DSM. It’s so funny to me to “listen to your words” in this video (and others) as almost always you end every UGreen feature sentence with “but…”. It seems like it’s so hard for you to just give UGreen a compliment and just stop there. You almost always have to follow it up with some type of negative comment. On the other hand whenever you’re speaking about Synology and you bring up something negative about them, you always follow up with something positive to say about them, and mostly related to DSM. Whether you mean to or not, you definitely seem to come across as a “Synology Fan Boy.” Synology is clearly SHOUTING they don’t want to be the #1 “consumer” nas anymore, and yet you keep trying to hold them in that #1 spot. Month after month, model after model Synology continues to become less and less consumer friendly / focused. They’ve made it very clear they are moving more in the direction of being a resource for businesses, not home consumers… yet so many of you refuse to “let go.”

        No one disagrees that the Synology App Store has “the most apps” of any other NAS brand, but quite frankly not everyone needs six versions of a backup program or four versions of ??, or five versions of ??, etc. etc.. “More” doesn’t always mean better. Also, there are just so many things in the DSM Store that many average user/new NAS user just don’t even need or use.

        We’re not a monolith or homogenous group of consumers. We all have one basic common need that we share, which is the need for storage space. Outside of that, the variations of what people do with their home server is so wide and diversified that no one brand, including Synology is a perfect fit for everyone.

        As you mentioned, Synology is the oldest brand! At 25 years old, they should be SOOO far ahead or EVERY manufacture the market today, but the cold facts are, they are not… and that’s by choice. With only being on the market for just 1 year (in the west), the fact that you’re making a comparison video between UGreen and Synology clearly speaks to just how far behind the competition Synology is falling… by the hour. Time to let it go my friend. They are not the brand they used to be…. and the quicker we all accept that, the quicker we can invest our hard earn dollars into new market entrants like UGreen, etc. to far exceed Synology & DSM.
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      56. UGREEN: nope.
        Not now, not tomorrow.
        Now that Synology has dropped the mask, it’s either custom hardware with TrueNAS if you know what you’re doing, or custom hardware with HexOS for our relatives and similar cases.
        I’ve had enough of proprietary systems; fool me once, shame on you (VMware), fool me twice, shame on me (Synology).
        I’m not going to sit quietly and wait for QNAP or some 100% Chinese brand to be the third and do the same thing once again.
        F. them all.
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      61. You said it ???? UGreen is recommended because of its hardware And that you can install your own software. It’s the best of two worlds…consumers can have full control of the software, if you like to ????
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      63. There are a few things that you didn’t cover.

        Hardware

        Ugreen NAS has video output that is certainly convenient if you choose to load a different OS on the machine. The base root SSD is ridiculously small. I immediately upgraded this to 1TB and it can probably handle any 2280 NVMe module.

        Synology NAS has ECC memory support on their enterprise grade equipment (xs+).

        Software

        Ugreen NAS has hardware support for TrueNAS Scale. It also allows installation for ProxMox which opens up a totally different level of virtualization. I’m using both and it certainly has been solid.

        Synology’s support of Docker is sad. It is typically a couple of years out of date and they have a hokey method of installing Docker applications. Nothing standard here.

        Some of Synology’s software is not as well conceived as many people believe. You mentioned Active Backup for Business. There are two significant problems that should be addressed. It works well UNTIL you have an upgrade to either the client or NAS software. It has a tendency to either duplicate everything or completely fail to continue backups without any direct indication. Another problem area is the restore software. Their process creates a massive string of file identifiers that it has to reparse on EVERY individual file restoration. Restore software should never require days to actually accomplish. Try it, you’ll hate it.

        My Conclusion

        Synology has certainly pissed off people like me with their ridiculous requirement to purchase their drives. I recently had to migrate Seagate drives from an older DS1515+ to a DS1621xs+ when the power supply died unexpectedly. The migration worked without any issues or any complaint for not using their proprietary drives. The system upgraded to DSM 7.2 and all has been fine.

        It seems clear that Synology will tie down hardware limitations further, so there will be more disappointed people. Synology was even forcing their vendors to only sell xs+ hardware with their drives already populated. They may want to migrate to more enterprise customers, but they better watch out. I’m also an enterprise consultant, so I’m not going to avoid telling my clients what the truth is under the hood (bonnet in your case).
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      65. I’m not betting on this company based on the general behaviour of other companies on a certain mainland. No way. In a similar league as TP-Link, no thanks, at all
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      66. Ofcourse Ugreen are looking better hardware wise. With OS miles away from DSM, they have to differentiate and an easy way to do so is to give you better hardware for a lower price, since getting their software quality and feature parity will take years or may even never happen.
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      68. Don’t get how people get so courageous as to be ready to depend on proprietary devices and services for serious work. Especially in today’s world when companies easily dare to cancel the services people paid for. And lack of support and future support is just another matter as well as the topic of privacy and data security issues. And also security vulnerabilities and lack of future security patches…
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      70. Yeah well i am that guy i will consider ugreen after at least 10 years in NAS market. This comparison is ok from hardware perspective, synology doing this and that, but from OS side and generally reliability DSM is the best. They know it, we know it, everything else is just business.
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      72. I have to say, ugreen was my savior on kickstarter, 600$ for that beastly 6bay????. Running truenas of course. And for that, i think i couldn’t have built a better system myself (upgraded to 64gb ram as well – used from ebay as well as 2x 2TB SSD’s). But at current prices i think id still be stuck with some cloud provider ????
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      74. Here is the thing. I work at a business that provides enterprise class appliances. I fully get why Synology is doing this as fewer variety = easier support. Not all hard drives are created equal. You use the lower end consumer based junk and there are a number of differences between the firmware to the controller behavior. So yeah I get it. However, in today’s world, consumers are rightly pissed with businesses in general trying to nickel and dime everyone to the edge of what consumers can tolerate. So it is completely understandable why people are freaking out as this can be seen as a cash grab lockin. In any case I’m done with any of these AIO systems as I was burnt by QNAP when my motherboard died after only 4 years of owning a $3000 NAS. In that time they discontinued the model. And didn’t have parts to repair even after EOL. Meaning to get my data off the system (I could recover about 80% of the data from backups) I ended up spending $2300 for a new NAS. From here on out I’m BYOing it so if a motherboard dies, I drive down to Microcenter and pick up a new one for a fraction of the cost of a new NAS. Never again
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      75. Looking forward to the more detailed comparison article. What would also be interesting is a detailed TrueNAS Fangtooth vs. DSM comparison.
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      79. Ugreen is a chinese company. All chinese companies can be ordered by their government to cooperate with them in accordance to chinese law. This means all your data can be used by the chinese government. A big no thanks from me. Always check if a company is chinese if they are going to handle private data.
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      81. I can say a stupid act from Synology to lock disks , same way of VMware price uprise for No reason other than killing the good product, I don’t know how top management and CEO think.
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      84. There is no comparison. NO ONE should use Synology anymore since they pulled a Crapple and only allow their ‘branded’ drives that cost hundreds of more dollars!
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      85. I’m just a casual and I’m still leaning to synology… but I haven’t take the plunge yet to NAS but been watching these YT channels to get a feel for what I should purchase , Rex Robbie WunderT
        and for my uses it still feels like Synology – photos, documents and some docker playing around … but will keep watching to see what gets covered on UNAP side

        I basically want to try stuff I keep getting fed thru google news feed from Marius Hosting and its thousands of articles for synology and just so much less for anybody else… and that makes a difference since i just want a NAS that works and lots of community support
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      88. Well I already have the synology and not buying anything to replace it, it’d build my own next time. That said that ugreen design looks really good
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      93. This is the type of info I need for my next choices. I currently have a DS 920+, but when I plan on expanding to a bigger NAS, it won’t be Synology the way they’re headed.
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      94. Thanks for the great video as always, but I really think all the creators in tech channels need to ban psychology until the company reverses their asinine policies stop reviewing their products stop pushing their products and make them persona non grata until they reverse their decision.
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      95. Home user here:

        I care about good support and compatibility with things like:

        1- amazing photo app – android & ios – – with ability to setup share space and share folder (these two thing are not the same)

        2- Drive server and app for Windows, Android & iso – – sync without issues and able to be connected through things like Tailscale.

        3- Support to one click install of Plex/Jellyfin

        4- Good security team that give user peace of mind.
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      97. Convenient timing, yet again.

        I’m shopping for my first NAS setup right now, trying to keep it simple with one of these purpose built devices. Was going to choose Synology but their hardware vs cost, and now limiting 3rd party HDDs is a big turn off.

        Literally ordered a UGREEN this morning.
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      98. I notice the channel never brings up anything about the risk of China putting a back door or a hack method into the firmware as part of the manufactoring. China is a huge risk to do any business with.
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      99. I’m moving away from a NAS and wanting to utilize a 5 or more bay to hold my drives and utilize a mac mini for the lifting/brains. What would you recommend?
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      103. Hi guys, somebody knows, how often is Ugreen releasing the updates of the UGOS? It´s like every month we can receive some new important function? And 2nd, has anyone tried to install the Truenas on the Ugreen?
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      104. Excellent overview, and then I think you missed one point that might be important to small and medium businesses: Support infrastructure. In my experience Synology’s support team and process are second to none. During the about 15 years of using Synology servers (currently 5 servers active for home and business) they resolved all the issues I experienced with the DSM or the hardware professionally and quickly without any useless bureaucracy or communication issues whatsoever – usually within a business day. I have no experience with uGreen, yet I know that building a professional support organization for a new line of products takes time, money, and effort. Something to consider before I entrust important assets to a newcomer. BTW I believe the HDD lock-in is one of the most egregious business miscalculations I have seen in a while. There is no reasonable explanation besides a cold money grab by Synology. Having a contender in the field (and QNAP clearly isn’t that) will hopefully teach Synology a lesson.
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      105. This is kind of a David and Goliath story. I’m rooting for David. The Synology thing with the drives is kind of like Ford requiring that the owner to use only Ford branded tires. It’s crap.

        I’m interested in UGreen but do to limited space, I am using a small rack and have two rack mount Synology’s sitting in it. UGreen needs to get going and their rack mount equipment. I would consider moving over at that point. I also love the idea of using Intel chips that will provide video services for Plex and Emby.

        I think that they are off to a good start. The only other drawback is that they are produced in China. This is a wait and see sort of thing on how China’s relations with the rest of the world go.
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      107. Must have been working on this for a month!! Excellent comparison although I’m not too excited by UGREEN. Is there currently or is it planned to have a similar head to head comparison with QNAP or other competitors to Synology. I’m a new NAS user (less than a year on a DS224+) and was planning to upgrade to 4+ bays within the year with Synology as I find their DSM very intuitive to use, almost to the level of needing no manual. This new constraint has really made me stop and reconsider my way forward. Thanks for the great service you provide. And I hate seagulls too.
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      109. Synology will Go bankrupt in the private market. And for a good reason! I Hope they will for their policies. UGREEN all the way. Thank god there is a good alternative.
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      110. Been 15 years with Synology: Great product but the firm stopped innovating 5 years ago. Moved to Qnap thank to Rob :hyper satisfied. How can we not trust someone being friend with seagulls !! IN ROB I TRUST, from France. UGreen looks promissing
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      113. Honestly surprised Asustor doesn’t get more of a look on the channel’s videos that do comparisons between brands. I have a AS5404T with 4x 16TB Iron Wolf Pro drives in Raid 5 and it works GREAT as a plex server, backup server, and file server in my apartment. It was easy to upgrade the ram, and I am looking to add some SSDs for cache in the near future with their 4 M.2 slots.
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      116. I have a Synology DS1821+ and after the recent update to that line is basically a downgrade, that’ll probably be my last Synology device. That 8-bay DXP8800 has everything I’d want from an upgrade – more cores, twice as much max RAM, way faster networking, and it has even more things I wasn’t even thinking of. If I was upgrading to an 8-bay today, I would be getting that one.
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      117. Will you be able to do a QNAP vs Synology? I was about an inch from pulling the trigger on a ds1522+ till i r3qs about the HDD 3rd party list nerf.
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      118. Need UGREEN to bring out an expansion unit for their NAS boxes, I’d swap over no problem.
        Just want some future proofing if I run out of space.
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      120. Each new Synology is a downgrade from the previous:
        – DS925 Removed the integrated Graphics Card from the CPU.
        – Now the new DS925+ Removes Support for 3rd Party Hard Drives.

        *The Next to go will definitely be the RAM.
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      121. This is exactly the video I was going to ask you on Reddit to do. I’m in the market for a Personal home NAS, and I want something relatively plug’n’play (I dont have the personal bandwidth to manage a NAS at work and home!). I was waiting to jump into Synology for my personal use after using them in the SMB world for years, but now I am completely turned off to their vendor-drive (or certified) lock in. I’ve been thinking QNAP and UGREEN 4x drive NAS and I look forward to this review/comparison!
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      123. So do we need UGREEN branded HDDs now? ???????? Synology want to cut their nose off to spite themselves. They are heading towards becoming a meme… a very bad one.
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      125. My problem with Ugreen is that it is Chinese, I just don’t trust a Chinese software with my data, even if it’d beat DSM. Also, not too many options to replace SHR, which I think is ESSENTIAL, for the SOHO user.
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      127. I strongly dislike the latest offering and the hard drive block. Unfortunately a lot of my extensive homelab infrastructure is built around the Synology Active Directory server, and Synology Active Backup for Business. I think if they made the latter a subscription only service (which I think is absolutely on their to do list), then there would be no reason for me to stay. Until then, I do not see a great option for switching as no adequate GUI-based open-source solutions exist.
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      132. As much as I appreciate the review, I would really like to see Ugreen compared to Asustor as it would seem that these two would be in foremost people’s minds as a replacement for their Synology NAS.
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      134. It’s funny, I was testing out Synology cameras, and liked them. Then a roofer ripped one off of my house, and I could not get a replacement. It was a big hassle. Ended up getting an Axis camera. If I have a drive fail, I’m not in the mood to be forced to wait on an OEM part as the only option. Looks like they are trying to change their demographic to primarily business customers.
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      136. I’m also a former Synology client. Would have given them more money but their shenanigans turned me away. Rocking a UGREEN now and super happy so far. The one area UGREEN needs to work on is the Photos app. It’s quite lacking.
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      138. Hang on a minute there Robbie! Don’t know if you just mispoke, or I misunderstood what you said, but you can get the Jellyfin app package in the Synology Community repo, no need to run as a container! For me though it’s all going to come down to Synology Drive, Hyperbackup and system security and operational stability. If there is nothing that matches those features, and no I don’t care about “almost as…” or “close to…”, I’m just not prepared to take the risk of moving from DSM, well not for my work NASs anyway.
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      142. SOftware part is irrelevant. Synology is consistently removing features and this video can age like a fine milk when watched in few months. Add the same time ugreen is adding something basically every week
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      143. Do UGreen offer hardware support within the UK ? Where do you have to send the NAS when it goes wrong ? Can they ship an advance replacement unit to minimise downtime ?
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      144. Own two synology NAS units and I’ll carry on using them but I’ll never buy another. First removing white a few features and now this. Even if they end up doing a complete 180 (which I doubt), there’s 0% chance I’ll buy anything from them ever again.
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      145. I thought I wanted the UGREEN DXP-4800. I watched your vidoes on building a Jonsbo NAS I really want to build one with the N4 case and use Hex OS. If I chicken out I will buy the UGREEN. Thanks for the advice!
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      146. Yes, Synology have more Apps, but I would argue many of them look like they were designed in 2004. Personally, I’d rather have one well designed App than 20 mediocre Apps. Synology is more confusing, half of them are called “Synology …” and half are called “DS …”, there’s very little consistency on the Synology side. If you need an App on UGreen, there’s one that has everything, some will see that as a limitation, I see it as a feature.
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      147. I ended up backing out of the Ugreen because I wanted ECC memory for ZFS, but if you don’t care about that, their hardware is good.

        Software wise, learn to use Docker Compose for either.
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      151. Im a professional photographer with 600,000+ photos/video in my (rapidly growing) catalog. I had ZERO NAS experience before finding this channel and needed to find a solution to my storage problem – quickly. UGreen DXP8800+ offered me the modern technology i needed st an affordable price and the freedom of wide compatibility. I think Synology missed a chance bringing me (a beginner) into their ‘tech family’ – it’s taken a few weeks to set it up and test, but UGreen has been working solidly and I’m very happy with my choice so far.
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      153. I think it’s up to preference, some customers look for reliability and peace of mind – this will probably choose device with tested HDDs with model they buy, because for them their data is more important than HDD choice and it just works. Some customers prefer freedom of choice, they will choose brand with broad “compatibility list” but nobody will guarantee them that this solution will work in every case, because nobody tested this properly. Hardware is just 20% of whole solution, the whole process of building secure software requires a lot of resources and control of whole chain of packages and libraries used in a solution. It’s really not so hard to make good NAS hardware, but it’s a lot of effort to build great and secure solution. So If I have to choose solution that just works for me, I get a Mac not PC, iOS not Android etc… but this is just personal preference. Everybody has his own needs. At the end, customers will decide what do they prefer.
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      154. Love the Synology OS… been waiting for a new 6-Bay to upgrade my 1618+, but now I might have to jump ship to another NAS company.
        They will also loose out on the Synology C2 backup subscription I’m currently using. They will loose a lot because of this, I think.

        Maybe you could make a video on how to migrate from Synology to any others.
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      155. Any ugreen owners out there? I’m looking to get my first NAS. I’m either going with the 2 bay or 4 bay. My concern is noise – can anyone share their experience? My nas will have to be in my living room unless I can figure out a way to put it in another room…so I’m worried about noise. Thanks!
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      156. Thanks for doing this. I am gonna upvote every vids being posted that provide educational content for how to migrate away from Synology at this point.
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      159. Already Bought the UGreen DXP8800 Plus 8 Bay (already have 8 Bay Synology NAS), got this due to to way Synology have gone. Updated Memory, added Samsung NVMe drives and 8 WD Red Pro Drives – Absolutely love it. Build Quality excellent, Connection options excellent, software still being developed/Updated but for me as a Home User is OK. I am really happy with the UGreen NAS.
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      160. Why did QNAP drop off the face of the earth for you. Synology vs QNAP makes much more sense. Most Synology folks I know went to QNAP for smb and prosumer.
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      162. I followed your reviews and went UGreen DXP4800 Plus for the excellent HW and installed TrueNAS. No “drive lock in” not even “OS lock in”. Keep up the great work.
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      167. I own three Plus-models (oldest is the 1618+) and am the “familiy admin”. If they are going through with this bs, those are my last ones and the last ones I will ever suggest or administrate. Not even the 20TB IronWolf Pro and higher are in any of my compatibility lists.
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      168. So a Synology M.2 2280 NVMe SSD SNV3410 800GB is £385 in UK. Wow, that’s expensive! These are rebranded Toshiba or Seagate drives with modified firmware and with dreaded DRM added. A few people have had these die already.
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      170. I don’t care what Synology do with their future products, there are plenty of alternatives out there. Let’s hope they aren’t stupid enough to brick older devices. That won’t end well for them.
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      171. I don’t think there’s any reason defending this behavior. People will simply switch to other brands and abandon those who rip them off, like Synology tries to do here. There would be an argument if Synology produced their own drives but the only thing they’re offering are rebranded drives for a higher price.
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      172. I live in australia and a bit fund strapped, but was thinking of getting the 925+ so we can see just what the heck it can do without synology drives. Should setup a go fundme to purchase the 925+ with some 8tb wd/seagate drives to see what we can do? How do you even do fundraising? Go Fund Me? Indigogo? most of those platforms are for scammers and this is a genuine question so we can get to the truth before we abandon a sinking ship!

        Update: Looks like 1×925+ and 2xWD WD80EFPX 8TB Red Plus 3.5″ 5640RPM SATA3 NAS Hard Drive and 2x Seagate ST8000VN004 8TB IronWolf 3.5″ SATA3 NAS Hard Drive runs around $2400AUD from MWAVE. Only distributor I could see selling 925+ at a competitive price
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      173. A class action needs to be brought against Synology. Customers bought these systems on Synology’s word—that they were fit for a particular purpose, that there were third-party drives that were compatible and explicitly listed as such. With this rug pull, they have fraudulently misrepresented their products to their customers with a bogus compatibility list they had no intention of honouring. They are effectively implementing software-induced obsolescence under the guise of “system integrity” and “reliability.”

        This is not just an utter betrayal of trust—it’s a textbook bait-and-switch. Synology sold NAS systems promising flexibility and interoperability with widely-used third-party drives. Customers made purchasing decisions based on those claims. Now, through firmware updates and policy reversal, they’ve effectively revoked support for those same drives, stripping users of key functionalities like storage pooling, drive health monitoring, and lifespan analysis—unless, of course, you buy their marked-up, rebranded hard drives. Drives which, in many cases, are just Toshiba internals with a different sticker and firmware, although they claim that these drives are rigorously tested, consumers have no visibility on that process, so we should just take their word for it, their word that so far has been lies and manipulation, they might as well re-brand themselves to a sticker company since they are just plastering their brands on Toshiba Hard Disks .

        This move is not just unethical—it’s legally questionable. By disabling expected core features after purchase, Synology has breached the implied warranty of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. When consumers buy a NAS system based on a published compatibility list, that list forms part of the product’s value and functionality. Retroactively invalidating it effectively renders the product unfit for the use it was purchased for. That’s a breach of contract, plain and simple.

        What’s worse, they’ve pushed these changes through under the radar. Users report installing firmware labeled as “DSM 6.2” only to find DSM 7.2 stealth-installed, complete with the new limitations. No warnings. No opt-ins. Just a unilateral, forced shift to a closed ecosystem. This is deceptive, predatory behaivour, and it may also amount to a violation of consumer protection laws in multiple jurisdictions, including the U.S., EU, and Canada.

        To be clear: Synology has intentionally devalued their customers’ hardware post-sale in order to funnel them into a locked-in, proprietary ecosystem. It is an act of unjust enrichment—one that needs to have legal consequences. Their actions not only diminish the resale value of older units, but they also coerce consumers into purchasing overpriced Synology-branded components simply to retain functionality they already paid for.

        This is about more than NAS drives. This is about a company asserting that it can change the rules after the fact, undermining your ownership, your purchase, and your rights as a consumer. We cannot allow this to stand.

        A class action is not only justified—it is necessary. Synology must be held accountable for this deliberate, anti-consumer manipulation. There needs to be a precedent set and a warning to all manufacturers: you cannot redefine the terms of sale after the sale. You cannot steal value from your customers and hide behind firmware. You cannot gaslight a user base into silence while you rewrite the fundamentals of product ownership.

        This is not reliability. This is abuse. And it’s time the courts stepped in.

        More than Just NAS! It’s now fraud! Two in one bargain!
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      174. This was why I migrated from WD to Asustor. I know that the MyCloud series doesn’t feature very highly among followers of this channel but they essentially did the same thing a number of years ago.

        There is a comparatively short list of non-WD drives that are said to work with WD enclosures but availability is a limiting factor.

        Ironically, it might have been that move that cost them a place in this market. These kinds of monopolistic tactics rarely pay long-term dividends. The market just migrates to other, less predatory brands.
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      175. We are all understand company needs for profit, that’s not the problem, having more “security” and “stability” is also good and understandable, the problem is that all Synology fans feel BETRAYED, that is the most important asset for a company, when you lost trust, there’s no comeback, they choose their profit over their customers
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      178. The lock in is going to push labers and folks that care about to put for example, 5 WD red 12TB in their Synology. That will save them 500-600 euros in regards to use Synologys own Toshiba drives. After my 1522+ is done, i will get something else, like Unifi:s NAS. Synology is doing all the wrong things right now. It all started with videostation and the codec:s impacting surveillance station. That’s to bad.

        I know something that will never change. That is Rob:s goldy watch ????
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      181. While there are plenty of alternatives when it comes to raw storage, replacing Synology Drive, hyperbackup, active backup for business, cloud sync, and backup for 365/google has its own costs in setup and management time or licensing.
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      183. That’s awesome! It’s going to force me to build my own—TrueNAS SCALE, here I come! They just keep taking away video station is gone I can’t pay for the h265 license within it it should be progressing not regressing.
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      184. Simple question: what feature does the DS925+ have compared to the DS923+ that makes it so much more desirable ? Because honestly, my DS918+ is very much sufficient in most cases. I’m not transcoding videos all the time and also a 10 Gbps port is much more a nice to have feature than a required one, because I would need to update all the rest of my home network to profit from it.
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      185. You make it sound like more messaging benefits them. It sounds like confusion may be to their advantage. This is them circling the drain like HP printers and their liquid-gold ink.
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      186. Thanks for this. I was waiting to see what Synology would say about this stuff. All I had up till now was just rumors. I’m in no rush at this time to replace my DS1817+. So, I’ll see how honest they are with the statement about adding 3rd-party HDDs to their official HCL. I am very skeptical though, and have already queued up an equivalent QNAP upgrade when the time comes. One could say too that if this was not simply “drive locking” then Synology would have probably already provided the data to back up their statistical claims. Yeah … I’m very skeptical. Seen too many businesses pull this type of thing, using similar claims, and none of them ever provide any data to support their claims. Here’s a few examples:

        Apple: Resisted 3rd-party repairs, throttled iPhone performance to preserve battery life without clearly communicating … only acknowledged after they were caught in the act.

        HP: Printer ink. FW updates routinely disable 3rd-party ink cartridges. Marketed as QA measure (like Synology is doing), but no public data released backs up the stated failure rates of 3rd-party ink.

        Dell: Server and workstation components often require Dell-branded HDDs, RAM, and power supplies. BIOS-level warnings or flat out refusal to boot if 3rd-party parts detected. Claimed it’s about “validated reliability” but without transparent metrics.

        Cisco: SFP/SFP+ modules are disabled or warning presented if they are non-Cisco branded. Argues about QA and compatibility, but again … no public failure stats of 3rd-party products.

        Sony (PlayStation): Locked PS3 and PS4 down hard. Removed Linux support mid-cycle, blocked 3rd-party accessories with FW updates. No data ever provided about why 3rd-party gear posed a problem.

        John Deere: Agri equipment -> implements software locks to prevent self-repair or 3rd-party app usage. Publicly claimed it was for safety and reliability, but offered no concrete data on part failure or repair quality.

        Samsung: Smart TVs and SSDs: Occasionally locks features behind specific drive models (eg: in SSD firmware/TV FW updates). Promotes them as “optimized” but without side-by-side transparent performance metrics.

        Bose: Pushed FW updates that removed or degraded features (ANC, EQ control) from older products. Blamed user experience “optimization” … again, with no data shared.

        So, yeah, I’m not expecting any data to be publicly shared by Synology that would support their claims. At the end of the day, they’ve chosen their stance, and it’s up to consumers like me to decide whether “enough is enough”.
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      187. I’ve owned two Synology Plus series NAS units. The first went for warranty repair then failed out of warranty, and I replaced it to reuse my SHR array. My drives have outlasted one NAS and are now in the second. I’m looking to move away from SHR to avoid being locked into Synology, as I don’t want to be forced to buy another when this one eventually fails. Even though it’s working now, I need to plan for future failure. If I need to migrate my files to a more standard RAID, I might as well switch to something like a QNAP.
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      189. Good call on show us the statistics. I mean if its 1 drive in every 1000 failure rate then these percentages they quote mean nothing. because its percent of the failures i.e 1 not the 1000 drives.
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      190. They could have gotten away with it if this gen of boxes came with a significant increase in network and CPU capabilities and like a 5 years warranty on both hardware and disks combos but not while still recycling the same 10 yo sht bottom of the trash parts bin hardware at the same time.
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      191. There’s just too many issues with this kind of lock out (and I am being locked out of buying drives I want, not locked into theirs). What if there’s a manufacturing issue with a batch of their drives? What if someone buys a huge portion of stock and we have to pay scalpers prices? What if THEY suddenly decide our prices are just 30% more than better known manufacturers? Supply chain issues could stop us having any drives at all. Where is my CHOICE?

        Actually, I do have a choice, and that’s not to buy Synology at all.
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      193. As a business user I understand this strategy. If I buy a new NAS for my company, I want reliability. And if that reliability costs me 50% more for each (already inexpensive) HDD, I don’t care a bit. I want reliability. The moment I spend two hours on troubleshooting a problem caused by a third party HDD, I am losing way more money that what I spend extra for Synology approved/branded drives.
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      195. Just accept Synology desire to go bankrupt and stop buying. Once it goes bankrupt the other NAS manufacturers will receive a clear message not to follow such a stupid plan.
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      203. Compaq use to issue the same type of statement regarding equipment that could be installed in their PCs and servers in the 80’s and 90’s – other businesses like ALR, AST, Intel, HP and many others just set their prices below Compaq’s and the rest is history. All Compaq did was to provide guaranteed operational margins for the other vendors.
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      204. DS1815+ owner. Been waiting and waiting for the new DS18XX+.
        Been disappointed in the hardware, but the couple of apps in there catalog (Hyper Backup, Active Backup For Business, Active Backup For Microsoft 365, PLEX) but the hardware is under powered.

        Now with this HDD BS, I am looking at UGreen more than ever.
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      205. And THIS is why I bought an 1821+ I’m so glad I saved the money and preserved my freedom of choice. What’s worse is the drives aren’t even true proprietary drives. They are just white labelled drives from the brands you already use but at a more expensive price, just like their NIC cards and NVME sticks. Totally a ripoff.
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      206. Synology are seeing all the new competitors in the market (UGreen, UniFi, etc) and going, how can we reduce our market share and help these guys out. It’s a slippery slope, they may add third-party drives “later” but it’s obvious they want to move all there solutions to Synology only drives eventually, might not be this year, might not be next, but it will happen eventually and we all know it.
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      208. With PLEX as my main usage for my DS1019+. I am asking is there away to change my storage over to a qnap whilst using my 10 tb drives from the Synology ?
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      214. If the synology drives were the same price or cheaper than other brands and were readily available then it probably wouldn’t even be an issue, but they are none of those things.
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      215. I don’t understand what the fuss is about when you can always build your own NAS, just like how you can build your own PC instead of buying prebuilts.

        This isn’t like the laptop market where basically your only options are buying prebuilt or refurbished, since no one really sells individual laptop parts like the chassis on its own. You have a ton of freedom when it comes to NASes.
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      219. The fact that Synology does not disclose critical information that substantiates their reliability claims sends a signal in itself. Confusion can be a deliberate tactic. Indeed, very often silence speaks much louder than words.
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      220. Synology no longer wants you as customers. They only want companies that spend as much as they want on devices and maintenance anyway and are impressed by all this phrase-mongering on the homepage. The hardware is outdated: The fans are loud, the processors are weak, and they still haven’t managed to integrate an uninterruptible power supply for private users. Every laptop, no matter how cheap, has better features.
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      221. Can someone explain to me if this will happen with this setup? I currently have a 918+ running DSM 7.1 with Seagate 8TB Ironwolf drives. If I buy a new 1825+ when released and stick those drives in and then expand the unit out to have 8, 8TB drives in it all seagate iron wolf drives because I am moving the drives from one machine to another then those drives are not compatible to that unit? or will it be tied to software or is it in the firmware ie bios etc? Cheers
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      223. No way Synology. They’ve embraced the dark side of enterprise storage lock-in. Who needs those pesky home office/SMB customers who want flexible and cost effective choices at the expense of our bottom line? Reminds me of Broadcom’s purchase of VMware.
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      224. I have been a Synology user for about 15 years now. I will not purchase another Synology device if I am not able to use regular HDDs. Nor will I be able to recommend them to small businesses either.
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      225. Can’t wait to see a business purchase their products and drives and then when a disk fails find that the time to replace the drive will be weeks because they have to purchase a drive from Synology themselves and have it shipped out vs going to a local store and purchasing another drive. I’m sure their customers will be thrilled!
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      228. 19:16 I’m sorry, but this is not correct. The largest complaint isn’t that the messaging is “garbled”. The messaging is pretty clear. They are locking these down to Synology-labeled drives only. They literally said that exactly in their statement. The largest complaint that people are saying is that that sucks and is very anti-consumer. You are giving them a lot of benefit of the doubt on this point, as well as the “let’s wait and see once it releases wider.” Why wait? It is released already, and this is the state of it. Their promises of “future compatibility validation for 3rd parties” aren’t worth the bits that they were written with. It is vapor until they prove it with an actual list actually being out on actual machines, and if it were important to them to do so, they would have prepared ahead of time so that it _was_ ready for the release of these new systems.

        I don’t mind the impulse to avoid jumping on bandwagons and to take the news with a more critical, measured eye, but your conclusions here are pretty divergent from what I would expect a reasonable person to come to.
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      231. Completely locking out drives that are not on white list are unacceptable, especialy with specific firmware.
        Drive models are often getting replacced by vendors by never models or their revisions and its absolutely impossible to get ones with specific firmware.

        For me hard locking on anything is 100% unacceptable so for me Synology is on black list from now on.
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      232. My device, my choice what to do with it. If I want to use the cheapest, most unreliable HDDs in it it’s my choice and I have to bear the risks. The manufacturer can’t dictate which drives I’m allowed to use for a product I own privately. If these were enterprise models with dedicated support/warranty it would make sense but not for consumer products. If they force consumers to use only their certified drives they need to be liable if a drive fails as they’ve certified the drive for longevity/reliability.
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      233. Welp, I’m gonna keep my 1522+ for along time then!! Seagate EXOS 16/18 drives are VERY highly regarded in the data industry, and that’s why I run them. I would be furious if I was REQUIRED to purchase the Synology branded drives, an inferior drive at a much higher price, no thanks.. And, 55.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot 😀
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      236. I bet they will back down on this, I think they already mentioned they will make a list of drives that are allowed. (to clarify I mean non-SYNOLOGY drives)
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      239. Biggest load of absolute marketing and PR bullshit ever. I won’t be using Synology products going forward, plenty of other offerings available that don’t put artificial and unnecessary restrictions on usage. Well don’t Synology, I hope your shareholders are pleased with this plan to alienate your now former customers ????????‍♂️
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      243. I have been and the emphasis here is on been a customer or user of Synology products for many years now.
        I once had problems with a DS1515+ with disks from WD that were not on the compatibility list.
        This was due to the batch of disks. It wouldn’t have made any difference if they had been on the list.
        Then I once had an NVME SSD fail. It wasn’t on the list either. But it also failed completely, so
        the list wouldn’t have made any difference here either.

        For years it has been annoying that you couldn’t transfer the warranty to the new owner if you sold it.
        I got stupid answers from Synology, such as that it could not be guaranteed that the device had been properly packaged,
        when it was sent to the new owner.
        Oh, that’s why the electrolytic capacitor in the power supply burst months later, because the box, which was the original packaging, was not ok……
        Then there were the various annoyances of the customers: volumes only with NVME SSDs, which are on the list,
        the annoying message regarding incompatible drives and so on.
        Now the final bully of the customers, with this ridiculous “only our drives” nonsense.
        As if the customer couldn’t have been given a choice. Support for drive problems when it’s our disks, none when they’re not ours.
        Simply confirm with a check mark when setting up the pool.
        Hey Synology, thanks for making my decision to switch to another brand easier.
        In any case, I’ll vote with my wallet and avoid you in the future.
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      244. Weird they won’t validate the original 3rd party drives that their own brand drives are re-badged from… almost like they want you to ONLY buy THEIR drives.
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      246. I currently operate about 30 NAS from Synology of the lower product line. (Only 3 Plus series). Except for the Plus series, they are not production storage, but only for storing backups of stations/servers, etc. … The ecosystem suits me and in my case vendor lock is completely irrelevant. I use the same device for 8-10 years before I replace it, so the costs are not important to me. And since it is one of the backups, I do not need 24/7 production reliability. However, I do not welcome the step from Synology and their justification is weak. The competition is at the same price level for my cases +/- and a custom solution TrueNas and the like is out of the question.
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      250. I’m a little conflicted.
        I manage just shy of 30 Synology NAS.
        I’m now investigating other options for clients – but at them moment, I don’t have a valid replacement that has something as good as Active Insight, replication and more importantly Synology Drive (basically on-demand sync using Apple’s FileProvider API)
        A large portion of my clients are mixed onsite/WFH.
        VPN/tailscale doesn’t cut it for remote access with design tools – I do need a sync on demand client
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      251. Ah yes, ‘Competitively priced’ sure Synology, thats why your HAT5300 4TB is $451NZD and an EXOS 7E8 drive is $468… oh, that EXOS drive is 8TB…. much better, EXOS 7E8 4TB for huh… $310 or an Iron Wolf for $191 — I could even get a Red Plus 10TB for $474 and I’d far sooner spend an extra $23 to get 2.5x the storage.

        Very competitive… if you’re blind and numerically challanged!
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      252. I have owned two Synology devices 920+ and currently a 923+. I will not be buying another now that they are locking their platform down. It’s Unraid for me from this point on. This is nothing but a shameless money grab.
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      253. I wanted to buy the 625 slim as I have 5x1TB SATA WD Red SSDs, but if they only support their enterprise SATA SSDs, there is no way I am going to buy one. I want to move over to pure nvme flash storage in the future anyway, so my 423+ might be my last Synology.
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      254. I am on my third Synoloy NAS, and it will surely be my last. I was already sick of overpaying for ancient hardware, so this ridiculous price gouging on drives is the last straw. What an absolutely stupid move…
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      256. The “40% less storage issues”, even if real and whatever it means, still applies to ALL supported drives not to Synology-branded drives. So Synology already has a list of verified drives which it recommends and supports, but somehow this list is magically not applicable to new models.

        They can’t even say there’s a new compatibility situation because it’s the same AMD hardware as before. Not that compatibility issues between SATA drives and SATA controllers was a thing ever.
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      257. Synology have a very shallow moat around their business, which is DSM. Once a cheap or open source version of solid alternatives to some of their apps appear Ill have no reason at all to keep buying their hardware.
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      259. Maybe someone can hack this new system with other or cracking DSM so it can bypass this limitation? I have to admit Synology hardware is quite good, no problem so far.
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      260. Glad I pulled the trigger on a UGreen 4800 plus with 3 16TB Ironwolf Pro drives last month instead of continuing to wait on the new Synology systems!
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      261. Synology is going to die. They’re going to die like the American Democratic party because they cannot read the room. Americans are going to buy American rather than being mandated to figure out which HDD they need to buy to support yet another Chinese business that is struggling to stay relevant. The reality is they are moving manufacturing back to America along with the fact that up to 80% of factories in China, in any business, are experiencing MASSIVE amounts of expected orders that will simply not happen. Enterprise systems and those system engineering pathways will not return to a standard in the long run that allows Synology to continue down the path of controlling a market they already lost to their own Chinese competitors that were already pivoting to use new reliable media that is more reliable and less problematic (in perception if nothing else) that the hundreds of companies that xAI alone is financing to correct the global market toward an American market. There could be a revolution in China tomorrow and this trend will not stop. No one is going to pay for foreign enterprise systems if an American alternative presents. Synology has probably invested heavily and will ride this river out to it’s end. They should pivot to partnering with an American manufacturer and offer as many HDD alternatives and other storage strategies just as fast as they possibly can. The Chinese NAS companies that will survive are probably the first to partner manufacturing in the physical CONUS landmass. They’ll make secret deals outside of political channels because they don’t want to be axed, as has been the case in the past. Personally, if I were in that position, and I were one of their engineers, I’d defect as soon as possible, and buy one of President Trump’s Gold cards and start a new storage company in the US.
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      262. I have two older Synology NASs. I had been planning to replace with this long overdue lineup. First they are using old processors, now locking out drive options. I wasn’t going to even look at the competition. With these new developments, it is time for me to research other options, i doubt Synology will compare well.
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      263. Note that when they say 7,000 hours of testing, they probably mean they tested ten drives for a month, not one drive for ten months.

        Meanwhile, it seems they’re implementing some kind of migration path for people who want to take their drives from old Synology systems and put them in the DS925+ . How long before someone writes a utility to format a drive so it looks like it’s been in a Synology system before? ????
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      264. I have been waiting to see their 2025 lineup to replace my 214play. When the specs leaked and showed they would be selling outdated hardware, I started considering looking at other options. With this new policy, I will ONLY be looking at other options. They can run their business however they see fit. But, I am not paying $550 for rebranded $275 drives in perpetuity. Hard pass.
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      267. Based on the trade deficit we will now chage our mind every 2 hours so our pre-informed friends can greatly benefit from the rapid changes. For now – Western Digital is out. I mean is in. I mean is out
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      269. If Synology is going to a closed-in ecosystem with their own branded HDDs at premium prices, then if anything goes wrong with their NAS devices, then they need to send a Synology technician to my house and troubleshoot and fix anything that has gone wrong, free of charge for me of course ????. I didn’t realise that off-the-shelf, branded drives’ reliability has been giving Synology such sleepless nights when the problem is most likely not significant despite their statistics shown here in this video. Appliance model? They’re going to start making refrigerators now? Please !!!!!!
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      270. Synology’s justification is made up BS. Bye, bye Synology. Bought two of your NASes but will from now on tell everyone to stay away from Synology.
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      271. Been with Synology since 2011, 3 NAS’s, been a big fan but it’s the end of the road for me. Pulling a move like this in 2025 won’t end well for them, they act like they are the best and the only choice, they’re not and they’re not. Best thing that ever happened to the other brands!

        I imagine my 1621+ has another 5-10 years of life in it but my next NAS won’t wear the Synology brand. Easy decision.
        I’ll go a step further and predict Synology reverses course 6-12 months in when they see sales figures, by then it might be too late.
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      272. Synology is so full of themselves. I would take any regular hard drive, let alone NAS level, over any of their NAS drives. Synology is prosumer at most not enterprise level. No more Synology for me.
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      273. synology 923+ for $599 w/limitations or…. Jonsbo N3 with AM4 board and 5600gt with 32gb ram for about the same price and Zero limitations and truenas scale…hmmmm decisions….. Who’s going to even look at the 925+????
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      275. I’m not fond of this approach and so I wont be purchasing another Synology NAS again (have been buying them for the last 15 years or so). I would rather build a small PC or go for another NAS manufacturer as it seems to be this not just about forcing customers to buy Synology-everything.
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      276. They don’t make it clear on the purchase details page what happens if you don’t use a compatible hard drive. I guess there will be a lot of returns when people buy it and find out that they can’t use their hard drives.
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      278. If they had included third party drives from the start I might have believed their PR and been OK with it. But they’re communication sucks. I’m not interested in paying a premium for Synology drives. My current NAS will probably be the last from them.
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      280. I’m out — that was the last straw. I’ve been satisfied with Synology products so far, even though they weren’t exactly cheap and often used older hardware. But artificially limiting the choice of hard drives is just one step too far. There are other vendors out there, and I hope they seize the opportunity.
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      281. Would this make companies that are thinking of using a NAS, go with something besides synology? That they can move there drive, that they already have from and old system?
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      283. As a consultant for a number of small businesses, this is concerning.
        I have been able to sell Synology as a solution due to its reasonable price, support for server, VM and PC backups, cloud offering for offsite disaster recovery…..and the fact that virtually any NAS rated drive will work.

        If the newer versions are only going to support their proprietary drive offerings, tat removes the reasonable price and drive flexibility part of the value. That’s leaving me with the just the backup license and a paid cloud backup…..which can be applied to any hardware solution.
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      284. *Shrug, then I’ll be pivoting to either QNAP or Ugreen for both myself and for my clients for the forseeable future. Pity, I’ve been using them for years.
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      287. Ah come on. Those Synology drives are stock drives with changed manufacturer infos and a nice sticker. No way are they having own drives manufactured. They could have changes in the firmware besides manufacturer infos, but that would mean other drives could NEVER be certified for use. So the fact that even the original stock drives aren‘t on the compatibility list means one thing and one thing only: This is about money. The Synology labeled drives will cost quite a bit more than the underlying stock drives.
        And Synology will feel the loss of consumer because of that.
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      288. So, if I say buy a Ds1522 now will it be under this synology restrictions? I have been pricing one out since the beginning of this year, but now I am a little bit concerned. Please advise. I was looking @ Ds923 or Ds1522.
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      289. Lmfao. This is why I’ll never waste my money on NAS’s. Locking you down on fucking HARD DRIVES. ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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      290. I could understand if Synology offers extended options for their own HDDs – but not supporting Toshiba, WD or Seagate anymore is a bad joke. As well as the handling of NVME SSD.

        I wonder all the time if synology really believes the crap they’re telling?
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      291. LOL there’s nothing more compatible than harddrives. pure upsell but funny to say “we’re turning into appliance” yet removing features left and right (Video Station, HEVC etc).
        but i wouldn’t worry much, this will be surely fixed be scripts.
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      293. Synology has betrayed those who got them to their current success in the market. I have a low regard for their leadership and I hope their market share goes down to zero. A pox on their enterprise and their leaders.
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      296. You should not be recommending Synology because of this drive toward restrictive propriatory practices. How can you recommend when overprices synology brand Ram&HD are actually low quality 3rd party products rebadged. If nothing else, the value proposition means you should not be ‘recommending’ them. Ive owned and maintained A range of DS products for many years. They are OK… but a pig when things go wrong (like the Intel Atom bug) . My DS918+ just completely died, and the plan was to get a DS925+ and move the 4x8tb Ironwolf drives over… now maybe not!!! Unless they sort this out quickly, looks like the 925+ is a no-go and time to move onto something better (UGREEN with TrueNAS maybe).
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      297. This is disheartening to say the least. This is pushing me harder to use TruNas or Unraid. This also removes the budget option for people wanting to use manufacturer recertified drives.
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      299. So we can move our existing drives from an older to a newer Nas ,bit if one hdd is broken and we get a replacement disk by manufacturer, we can’t use it anymore…cause it’s not listed…and this also means, if you have a listed disk..with a newer firmware..causes..not tested
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      300. How is this not going to be hit by the same regulations that stop printer manufacturers compelling you to use their inks? Look forward to the EU spanking them in the future.

        Until then, I will advise anyone looking for a drive to avoid these like the plague.
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      301. Doesn’t matter, I’m out

        I have two Synology unit units now

        Last night I ordered a Terramaster

        The low performance and high price was one thing, but the software made up the difference

        Now they keep canceling apps that I use, and with the inspector ofdrive restriction either happening, or happening in the future, I’m out

        I’m done with Synology
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      302. Synology is digging a hole like VMware. Never again, overpriced lackluster hardware, 4Gb of RAM in 2025, lack of respect for costumers. Synology is dead for me.
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      303. I own multiple synology units currently. I will never buy another synology product.. even if they reverse course here. I will also not be recommending them or installing them any longer through work. This is unacceptable.
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      304. Guess I won’t be buying or recommending Synology going forward. This might be fine for enterprise, but for home gamers and normal users this change will jack up prices over most peoples budgets. I wish they would just do a split, units for home and units for enterprise. Where all drives work for home, only Synology drives work on enterprise. Dellemc does this on some models.
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      305. I have noticed many software companies also going down the “take it or leave it approach” with their customers when they get too cocky, have a large user base and think their customers will just accept whatever they decide to insist on to generate more profit for themselves rather than as a benefit to their customers – especially in relation to subscription only models. I think this will be the end of people going with Synology as a product default – there are other players offering other higher specced/cost effective products in the market now and Synology don’t have the NAS monopoly to themselves any longer.
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      306. First, they abandoned Plex Media Server users, and now this ….. Without knowledge of their internal workings, it’s hard to know for sure, but it seems to me they could still serve the segment of the market that needs hardware transcoding. Does AMD not make processors with GPUs? And you would think with this move to limit HDD choices, they would have had 3rd party certification lined up and ready to roll out at the same time these 25’s come to market. The problems are compounded by the fact that the HDDs they offer don’t come in 20tb and 24tb. And what’s with the lack of 10Gbe ports? They were the market leader and probably just pissed that away. I’d rather not have to migrate to a whole new ecosystem, but within a few years, I may have no choice. Smells like poor leadership with confused priorities.
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      309. I completely understand and agree with Synology’s reasoning—it’s actually coherent and makes perfect sense: verified hardware == fewer issues, and if issues, better support. Simple, basic, solid.
        HOWEVER, THEY SHOULD COMMUNICATE THIS CLEARLY AND GIVE PEOPLE THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE ACCORDINGLY. It’s the lack of choice, that’s where they’ve lost me. For that reason, my fourth Synology NAS will be my last, and the ten I’ve recommended to others will be the last. HexOS has some strong years ahead, that’s for sure!
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      311. IF YOU CAN’T USE THE PRODUCT IN THE MANNER OF YOUR CHOOSING, YOU DON’T OWN IT.

        Their home-user friendly software stack will not be enough to carry them from the slump they are about to experience. I will never recommend them.
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      312. I will never buy a Synology NAS server because the limits are based on monopoly greed. The limits are not real, if Synology goes bankrupt then all new Synology NAS servers are a waste of money.
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      313. I don’t see how Synology would see such high failure / problem rate then a company like Backblaze. If Synology is using rebranded drives, there failure rates shouldn’t be any different than what backblaze sees in their quarterly reports.

        10:00 – your positives, aren’t really positives. Synology and DSM “moving” an appliance like ecosystem with a simple setup and config is WHY people bought them in the first place. Synology was ALREADY using an appliance model.

        And not retroactively screwing over customers using older devices isn’t a positive either. Synology knows that If medium to large businesses were suddenly needing to buy a bunch of brand new drives for NO reason for hardware thats already in production environments, Synology would be an instantly dead brand. And they aren’t dumb enough to do that.

        This move is ALL negatives, and NO positives in my opinion. Synology is trying to position itself like HPE and Dell. HPE and Dell will have their own re-branded drives in their servers at deployment (with the SSDs being re-branded Intel SSDs years back). However, Dell and HPE were doing so from the outset.

        This is planned obsolescence at its most transparent and evil. Now Synology can start doing what all the other brands are doing, lock away new features in their newer hardware… so not only do we have to spend money on the new device itself, but if we bought third-party drives on an old platform, Synology get to double-dip and make us pay more for their branded drives. The upfront cost to upgrade from an older device to a new one just raised by multiple hundreds of dollars.
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      314. I saw the writing on the wall awhile ago and went with a dedicated NAS … Unifi UNAS Pro. It does have it’s limitations, but it doesn’t have this arbitrary drive BS. It’s been working for months. No it doesn’t run apps like Synology, but I repurposed an old AMD Ryzen 4 motherboards and CPU for that. Bye Bye Synology. When my old 920+ dies, I’ll be done. As is, I’m relegating that drive to just backing up my UNAS PRO and App server.
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      315. Wow! for a 4-bay NAS that would be about $230 (CDN) between Synology and Ironwolf Pro drives. If you look at a TrueNAS Mini R vs. Synology 12-Bay RackStation RS2423+ would I be spending a difference of almost $1300 Plus the “Synology Tax” for 12 drives. I know which way I will be going… Synology you were great, but I think that time is past.
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      317. Why waste your time with recommending Synology anymore? There must be the narrowest segment of users who would want to pay premium prices for inferior hardware, lock themselves in an ecosystem at the mercy of a company willing to alienate a large segment of its user base, for what? Only those with money to burn and “just need it to work” or some niche DSM functionality would consider Synology and they don’t need a YT channel to tell them this. Your expertise is best spent on assessing the other options that would suit the 99%.
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      318. It’s one thing to publish compatibility lists. Synology doesn’t actually make RAM or HDD/SDD media. If you’ve ever seen what Synology charges for memory upgrades vs. what they’re available for as 3rd party retail, their pricing is way too high. I always bought my drives based on the published compatibility list models. To single source drives through Synology, however, is a whole other animal. I will not use Synology platforms if I have to use their labeled drives at their outrageous pricing. I’m looking to replace my DS918+, so it looks like I’ll be parting ways with Synology.
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      319. I hate to be the one that points out at Synology’s board meetings that people who run multi-drive NAS with redundancy are the same people who treat drives like a commodity… lol
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      320. So we have ancient hardware at high prices, phasing out of important features without a heads-up and a lock-in to relabeled overpriced bottom-of-the-barrel HDDs, sounds like a great recipe to lose all possible customer groups at once.
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      321. The fact is that, without exception, all the problems I have had with Synology, some of them considerable, have been purely software bugs. Hard disks have never been the problem. Search the forums, you will find NOTHING. Synology is dead. They are shooting themselves in the foot. No longer interesting for home users and there are better options for business. Fortunately there is Unraid out there. DSM finally runs fast on Unraid thanks to good hardware – surprisingly, no matter which hard disks 😀
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      323. The transition will be easy indeed. We’ll go look somewhere else lol.

        I’ve been looking at Synology NAS for 5 years now. This is the last touch to my network (Unify), Plex server and personal home cloud to part from Google cloud. I wanted to make me this gift finally, and was waiting for the 2024 rooster that became the 2025 rooster.

        Damn synology! I already bough 3x24Tb Ironwolf Pro installed temporarily in my pc-based plex server as my 2nd level backup solution.

        Too bad for them someone else will get my 1500$+ NAS investment.

        Synology ????????
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      326. NASCompares is paid by Synology, NASCompares says what the people that pay him want him to say. NASCompares is an Advertiser channel not a review channel.
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      327. A HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) can be a very good thing to follow. But I think it’s a big step going from being aware of the HCL and being forced to only use parts that are on this list.

        Way back a customer needed a number of servers to store their surveillance videos on. They had a bit over 200 HD cameras and needed a lot of storage to handle this. The number of servers were limited to four as the surveillance software licenses for the servers was pretty high. So they wanted these servers to use the largest HDD’s available at the time.

        The problem was that we used Adaptec RAID controllers in the servers and the latest and greatest HDD’s were not on the HCL yet. After discussions with both our contact at Adaptec and a drive manufacturer they were saying that it should work, but as it wasn’t on the HCL it wasn’t guaranteed. Anyway the customer wanted the drives and we built the servers.

        I think there was 32 drives in each of the servers so about 128 drives installed. And naturally it didn’t work reliably!

        I spent a day at the customer after all the RAID pools had failed drives, and on two servers R6 arrays had failed as two or more drives in the same pool had failed. Each pool had two standby drives just in case a drive in the array would fail and these had been initialized automatically. The positive thing was Adaptec and the HDD manufacturer had checked the logs and provided a package with a new firmware for the drives. So I spent a day updating the firmware for all drives on all four servers. We also switched out all drives that had as much as a single fault listed in the logs. After that the system was stable for years with no failed drives, we thought at least.

        The disturbing thing is that this company with over 200 cameras and a rather large server room with a lot of tech didn’t have anyone ever looking at the logs or taking a look into the server room to see if there were any red LED signaling that there was a problem or a failed drive. The reason they called us about the drives the first time was because the surveillance software couldn’t access the videos stored from a number of cameras. Before that they hadn’t even looked at the error messages that the RAID mailed to them about drive failures.
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      328. You know they will release a update that bricks your NAS and forces you to upgrade or purchase a new NAS requiring their drives. You won’t switch to a competitor at that point because you are locked in. Probably better to switch now
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      329. Pure sophistry from Synology. The mention of supporting third-party drives only if and when validated is an excuse. Their branded drives are Ironwolf or Toshiba units, so why are the OEM versions of these any different in terms of validation requirements? It’s like insisting on crash-testing a particular model of car simply because it’s a different colour to the ones sold by you.

        The only limitations Synology should place on the choice of hard drives is whether they’re NAS certified units. Don’t they think the HDD manufacturers making NAS oriented drives haven’t tested them extensively to live up to their enhanced reliability and operational environment claims?

        It’s pure profiteering from Sinology. They can package it any way they like, but that’s how I see it.
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      331. I’ll just stick with my Seagate filled DS 1821+.
        My concern is that this policy will be implemented in future versions of DSM. That is, if you want to upgrade to “DSM X”, one of the prerequisites will be to replace the Iron Wolf Pros with Synology Enterprise (in order to get the larger capacity) drives.
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      332. Presumably Synology doesn’t manufacture their own drives. They just get Seagate, WD or Toshiba to make them. So what specifically makes a “Synology drive”? It’s almost certainly just a rebadged existing model from one of the top 3.
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      333. Whoever is managing this change should be fired. Agree or disagree with the drive lock-in policy, the way it has been rolled out has been dismal.
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      334. They’ve shot themselves in the foot by not bringing out a list of 3rd party compatible products early on. I refuse to buy a product that requires their own branded drives. That’s all I’ll say for now.
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      335. They even do not try to hide their lies (statistics & printing another name on a well known product doesn’t make it better only more expensive), that’s not my cup of tea. Time to try other manufacturers…
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      336. Perfect time to figure this out, was about to pick up Synology and now I’m not. 🙂
        Looking for suggestions for an alternative to operate a Plex server and backup server at home. Comment below>>
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      337. Dumb decision. So the question is: if you have an existing RAID drive set and simply put them into a DS925+, will it just work ? Or are we cooked in that context as well ?
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      338. I was a long time Synology fan too, but no more. I’m done. It’s a pity because I was looking to buy a big upgrade in the next 12 months (4 bay, 20TB HDDs, 10Gb NIC) but clearly it’ll be best for me to look elsewhere.
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      339. I got a warning when I put a hard drive in my Synology NAS that was not on the list, but I was still able to run the system. You have to click past the warning.

        I don’t think I’m getting another Synology system.
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      343. That statement is complete bullshit, everybody with half a braincell knows this. I’m sure at some point there was ever a harddrive that came out with some very early firmware and somehow corrupted a synology drivepool. Then the firmware got fixed and all was fine. That is where they get their numbers, they are just fooling us. You really think they are testing all drives for months? No ofcourse not , it’s only about money. They buy OEM drives just build in a identifier tag in the firmware from the manufacturer and that’s it. Synology has become greedy, some manager came up with this stupid idea what sounds great on paper but is going to kill them completely. I’m sure they have corporate customers but they seem to forget us IT admins are the reason your products are even considered in those companies. If we don’t like you’re product you’re not gonna sell much of it anymore.
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      349. They just made migrating from a competitor financially ridiculous. This prices me out of my planned ’25 series move – looks like I will be sticking with TrueNAS.
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      352. I wonder if this is a ploy to gain revenue via asking manufacturers for “validation fee”… Not so sure they have the influence to ask this from the drive manufacturers.
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      354. When talking about drive verification I am willing to bet a large amount that they will use their own firmware / device IDs on commodity drives. Remember from the statement they already raised the idea that drive firmware can have a 40% detrimental impact on reliability.
        In all honesty I wouldn’t really care if they were serious about this and offered that firmware for you to install on an already verified drive.

        However, we all know that this will be used to enforce single party supply and at much higher pricing. Stock issues with their drives? Fuck you, the customer, just wait for your urgent storage upgrade. Want a diverse manufacturer base in case of design flaws or implementation issues? Fuck you again customer, have all the drives in the array fail at the same time for the same reason. Oh, you have the same drives in the backup NAS? Fuck you with a cherry on top.

        Congratulations Synology, you have just become as you aimed for, an appliance company. More realistically you are now in the same business as ink jet printer suppliers. You no longer sell NAS solutions, you sell consumables, with a lock-in, at exorbitant profit margins.
        I work in the SMB and Enterprise / Data Centre industries. Synology will never compete in the latter where this sort of approach is barely tolerated but accepted as part of the package. In the SMB space they are finished, neither myself or any of my colleagues will ever recommend Synology again.
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      356. Glad I bought a Synology nas already – I won’t get another one, the price gouging is really bad in Canada. At least I can use Seagate drives in the one I have.
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      360. You are so fair to Synolgy to close out with that statement but I am not.

        The more verified messaging that comes out the worse the whole thing looks. Synolgy will destroy the reputation they created.

        I started out knowing nothing about NAS or homelabing, and now I want to expand. The DIY or dedicated machine is something any of us that like these products will confront eventually and this just solidified if I do go with a dedicated machine it will not be Synolgy.
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      363. You can % this and % that but the drives are 2x as costly. I’ll retain this sentiment until they acknowledge that they rebrand aka slap a new sticker of other manufacturers drives. So they themselves use 3rd party. Hypocritical would be the word we use.
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      364. It is this exact reason why I chose QNAP over Synology when researching for a new NAS. Whoever came up with this idea probably needs to be put on their own performance & testing review ! Let’s see how this pans out over time. GREED
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      365. I worked for a “major storage vendor” in the support engineering group. The hard drives used there were both SAS and SATA based. Several years ago, fiber channel disks were the norm for high performance. All the drives had custom software. All local caching was disabled on the drives to prevent data loss in the case of power failures. (The write complete was the last thing set, and if was not set, any on the fly transactions were simply backed out of the system. The systems phoned home to report failing drives. In many cases, a replacement disk was on the admin’s disk by the time they noticed a disk had failed.(when you have a few hundred petabytes of storage, any chance for failures HAD to be minimized. That being said… there were certain brands of disk I ran into there that I won’t buy. I still avoid those disks, because the huge drive company was happy to send a few pallets of disk drives every few weeks to cover the drives that failed…but I will not put up with level of bad workmanship. When you see drives failing while not even in use, that’s not good. I am quite sure that Synology is using that brand.. Having drives that are certified to work in the storage array is good… every good. Unless they don’t follow up on the manufacturer’s testing. By having WD, Seagate, or whomever put custom configs on the drive is probably what they will be doing. The company I was working for did exactly that. Anything that didn’t have the company’s mark would not work, could not be brought into an array, and could not be accessed in any way by the normal operating system.
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      368. Just talked to a Synology Rep About new 2025 Line Up , He said Synology didn’t realize the Negative issues on the Hard Drive situation and
        how unhappy people are. Also said reason using old 2018 2019 hardware was to keep prices lower. I said raise CPU to something modern and I will pay the price. Synology will only care if sales are affected.
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      370. I think you’re spot on as it relates to messaging. Nonetheless we are talking more specifically about “Prosumer or Small Business” consumers here who have already invested in their desired drive brand and have successfully used them without issue. I’ve literally used (18) 14 & 16TB white labeled WD Red shucked drives in 3 NAS’s without a single issue for 5 years. That’s riskier and yet it’s been 100% fine.
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      371. I agree that the ambiguity in Synology’s messaging around this issue gives pause for concern…especially for existing users (like myself). It’s because of this ambiguity that I can’t in good conscious recommend a Synology 2025 plus series NAS model to existing Synology users.
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      373. Welp…. That is the worst load of BS those clowns have yet to regurgitate. And that is saying something. It is indeed completely over for them, and they don’t even seem to know.
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      375. Synology statement: Marketing BULLSHIT. They do NOT manufacture hard drives. They slap on a sticker. Totally disgusted with this brand now. From Hero to ZERO.
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      376. Come on, be serious anyone that recommended a synology system from now on is playing into the hands of prue corporate greed and nothing more.. If synology branded drives were the same price or cheaper I would believe everything they say but there is zero about there drives that will make this better. What they should have done is just have a synology certified drive and hdd manufacturer would have had to adhere to their certification standards.
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      378. Come on, be serious anyone that recommended a synology system from now on is playing into the hands of prue corporate greed and nothing more.. If synology branded drives were the same price or cheaper I would believe everything they say but there is zero about there drives that will make this better. What they should have done is just have a synology certified drive and hdd manufacturer would have had to adhere to their certification standards.
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      379. There statement actually proves that non synology drive work just fine because they stated that the have 40% less issues with compatible drives and there is no way in hell that many people are using synology branded drives in there nas, in fact I think stuff all people are using branded drivers as there is no reason atm to buy a synology branded drive that literally cost more money for nothing. How did they get there bullshit data. It’s clearly not from end users using synology branded drives, because no one is actually using them.
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      380. it is worrying esp since the last time i had any problems with my synology nas, it was the nas itself that croaked. was able to just pop the drives into a newer model to get it working again but it looks like i might be able to do so in the future unless i can source an older model that accepts the drives ????
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      381. I’ve only had Synology devices for about 4-5 years, with one installed at home and one installed at my parents, mostly because of SHR and the first-party apps like photos, drive, and Active backup, and that it was just simple to use. But this news has me exploring docker alternatives for easier migration for when it is time to replace mine in the future, be it QNAP, UGreen, or maybe even TrueNAS.

        Even if the HAT 3310 Plus drives are comparable in price to others on the market, it is still hard to accept this decision for a consumer/prosumer device. They should have just kept this requirement at the business level devices.
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      382. What concerns me is that a channel like your will still recommend their products. This is something that may lead to other brands to do just the same. Your channel convinced me to get their product, bought the first on and then deployed one to my dad and my brother was the next to get his.
        One thing that concerns me is the fact that if the drives have a problem, like 2 drives fail, and there is no synology hard drive available in stores? I live in Brazil, we barely have nas drives to buy, imagine a specific model from a specific company. Another thing is value. I use to change my spinning drives every 2 years. Wipe them out, migrate, sell the older ones and recoup my money a little bit. What will happen now? We will pay for overpriced HDD and if you decide to sell it, only specific set of people will buy them from you, but even lower than what they pay for regular drives. This is not enviromentally friendly too.
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      383. Damn. I was hoping 3rd party drives would result in a lack of technical support. This looks like a hard stop on installation, and regrettably a hard stop on my continued customer patronage with Synology. I only run Synology endorsed enterprise drives by Western Digital because that way the drives are larger than the kind of with Synology branding. All my memory and nvme are Synology branding. But whatever, I’m very disappointed and will probably switch to some other product in the future.
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      385. I just recently bought a 923+. First time buyer. This replaces a drobo 5n that finally died. I guess my ride with Synology is limited to this one unit because I will not buy another Synology if this policy persists.
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      390. I currently have 5 synology devices, I was hoping to replace with 2025 models, what a shame, i will not now. I do not trust synology to keep the drive compatibility list up to date, very disappointed by removal of 10gbe, removal of h265 native support, even older cpu with no transcoding support. I do certainly think they are ditching soho / home prouser market.
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      391. Yeah, I’m not a fan on this. Drives are largely agnostic, and “drive issues” they talk about, is down to user choose and using drives more likely to fail, not any sort of made up compatibility and “increased” data risk. This is most likely down to partnerships, drive rebranding and “Synology tax”. I have considered Synology, and would recommend them to other for software simplicity, but not anymore. I don’t wanna use Seagate drives, I’ve had bad experiences years ago, and statistically they do have a higher failure rate in the first few weeks. I personally have WD Reds in my 2 QNAPs (1 offsite – and those drives are 8 years old this year), and not mixed drives in DIY NAS, a couple are Seagate, but were lifted from free devices. Not once have I have experienced any hardware issues or compatibility, they 2 times I have had to contact QNAP support have been related to software/app updates that have broken something, and were fixed. This lockdown is purely a money grab exercise, and limiting drives available, where it reduces flexibility and agility if there are bad drives/models for people and companies, which does happy from time to time, then what Synology? You gonna compensate for data lose? No, I doubt that are you!
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      393. Wouldn’t be nearly as big of a deal if they didn’t overcharge like crazy for these S drives. As it stands, I am in the market for a new NAS and I will NO LONGER be considering Synology.
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      394. After 12 years, it’s time for me to say goodbye to symbology, I was very fed up with how close system they are now it is way too much, they preferred me to rely on their hard drivers other than brands which have been the Marcus for many many years what an idiot movement for a company
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      395. I’d doesn’t matter if they add WD and seagate drives eventually. The trust is gone. I buy a reliable product and trust I will get long term stable communication. This is hogwash. Everyone I help manage their NAS for agree as well. We will move on from Synology.
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      396. This is a very unnecessary and anti-consumer move. Even if you take their statement at face value, there’s a far better solution: just force the customer to acknowledge that by using unverified drives they will relinquish their right to user assistance from Synology.
        It’s ridiculous for a company whose whole business is making drives work together, to give up on making drives work together unless you pay extra.
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      399. I think they have been showing the prosumer the door for a while now. I am sure other manufactures will be glad to fill this void. Synology has become all about the enterprise now. My equipment is still fairly new so it will be a while before I upgrade. Time to let all this shake out. I am thinking QNAP, but we will see.
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      400. It will be interesting to see how they handle support requests.
        If you have an issue with a Synology drive, will Synology then handle replacements, or will the customers still have to source this themselves?
        I can see a customer being pretty upset if left to find a replacement from a single manufacturer rather than pick any drive from a QVL.
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      401. Who’s kidding who, this move is ALL ABOUT GREED! Their stance is we’re only allowing our drives to protect you…. ????????????????????They better fix this or they are going to lose a LOT OF CUSTOMERS!!!
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      402. The whole point of hard drives is they just work in the machine you put it in. But now im off to another nas supplier its such a pity as synology have good software I hate companies who are not thinking of their customers but rather their bottom line.
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      403. Synology is over here telling us that we aren’t allowed to use anything but their blessed drives in their new systems while enthusiasts have been hacking Synology DSM to run on unofficial hardware. I think the group that know how to build a nas will probably jump ship and Synology branded drives will become the “Apple tax” of the Synology world that people will just be okay with paying.
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      404. Great video! I think you missed one crucial thing though: I (and I am sure many other Synology users) would want to invest in the new series of models even though only Synology drives are supported IF the hardware would be truly updated so we would get something in return. So I think they should’ve wait one more iteration with this as I am sure they will jump on the AI-bandwagon as well (or they will cease to exist by the time it is 2030). So my advise to everyone who can and want to stay with them is: skip this iteration and wait for the new models coming in 2027-2028.
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      407. Synology 8TB drive £225
        Seagate Iron Wolf Pro £202

        £23 difference, does that really put people off when you are spending £1400 on a 4 bay NAS. For me I dont really care, but I do care that their hardware in comparison to other manufacturers basically sucks and is falling further behind.
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      409. I think this is a Disservice to those of us who are EX or active IT people who loved using this product as an appliance and chose to use NAS Drives… I chose EXOS drives I will be building a dedicated NAS in my future and FIRING SYNOLOGY… I mean I really wanted Transcoding at a better level on my 920+ when I chose it… but the 1Gb LAN was always a bottleneck… even for my Photo business on my local LAN. Was waiting eagerly for the 925+, but now… FORGET SYNOLOGY… Buh BYE!!!
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      410. Listen Synology, you still have time to fire department(s) responsible for this idea and start making more powerful devices and follow up basic standards. No, I don’t want to buy your sodimms, no I don’t want to buy your hdds, no I don’t want to buy your nvmes. Your OS is good. But it is not a deal breaker. Vendor lock is.
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      413. I’m so glad I decided to go with Ugreen for my NAS solution because even if I hate what Ugreen does software-wise I can always install a custom OS
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      415. So glad i just decided to build my own, may have been more headache but I’m not locked in to an ecosystem like apple does, it’s just shitty and i refuse to support any company that does this even if i have to figure out an alternative the hard way. FUCK CORPORATE GREED.
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      417. the worry is that I have a DS1520+ and I am cheap and use refurbished hard drives when I decide to upgrade my Synology can i move or migrate the Drives to the new unit?
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      419. I was thinking about buying a synology but they’ve convinced me to repurpose old pc parts and use truenas instead. I won’t tolerate companies telling me what I can and can’t do with hardware and software I bought and paid for.
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      420. As of 04 2025 the functionality and features of the Synology Hyperbackup is unique among the other top NAS brands. My research showed that there are no out of the box solutions from the other vendors that come even close. Please let me know if I am wrong. Until then I am locked into Synology ????
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      421. Soooo….Synology will be joining the likes of Bambu Labs.
        They make good products, but a mistake like this will cost them, in terms of Customer base.

        I wish them the best, they will see how this works out… by customers buying their products or not.
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      423. Until somebody puts out a real alternative to active backup, they still own the small business space.

        For example, I’ve really struggled to find a sufficient alternative for locally backing up Office365. (open to suggestions if there’s some gem out there ive missed)
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      424. I’ve already made my opinion of this known in various forums. One thing I thought of today was that I bet Synology is thinking they can squeeze the HDD vendors – There’s already a cost associated with rebranding HDD’s from manufacturers but this new “testing” requirement and some interesting wording in their statement makes me think that there’s even more to it. For example, “A more seamless purchasing experience” sounds to me like they want to pull an Apple move and control the entire chain. By controlling the model ID’s of drives they “certify” they can guarantee only drives they “certify”, i.e. get a cut of sales on, will work in their device. I think they’ve grossly overestimated their industry power, and SMB integrators are going to be steering customers to other more cost-effective solutions. Even at the enterprise level, which Synology barely even registers at, this won’t fly – HDD’s are a commodity when you’re purchasing them by the case or pallet. For the consumer level looking for something slightly (4 or 6 year old CPU? WTF) more performant than the non-plus models – I’m willing to bet this will be a pass too, especially since they will be competing with re-certified drives at a significant discount and Synology hardware costs are becoming more and more unrealistic in the face of competition with “good enough” solutions.
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      426. This probably has a lot to do with people new to network storage picking up used units for cheap, loading them with flaky, randomly sized drives, and then begging for help recovering from the dumpster fire they put themselves in.
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      428. Proprietary memory, Proprietary network Nics, Proprietary HHDs and SSDs, no USB connection compatibility, a reliable system is one that works with the most wide manufacture hardware, NOT one that is closed down by Proprietary crap.
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      429. i really think nothing to see here, if your busines user just use synology drives (its not much more), if your a home/pro user plenty of better more powerful bespoke solutions out there for the price/fun!

        synology plus’s are for the peoples who just want a boring reliable dependable well engineered **software stack** (the hardware is incidental)

        its my goto for business customers, that won’t change …. BUT i would *never* buy one for my own use, save the monies, build your own NAS, get a ugreen etc, and if your a pro user, mess around with openmediavault/truenas etc.. etc.. etc…

        PS if their software stack ever started going downhill… now that is definitely something to shout and scream about… ITS WHAT YOUR REALLY PAYING FOR 🙂
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      431. I don’t mind the HDD, I’m planning to buy a 2023 for my third party drives and a 2025 with branded drives. More concerned about the cashing SSD because branded ones are ridiculously expensive, I’ll definitely try stuffing a Samsung drive in there, if doesn’t work I’ll set it up first on the 2023, as well as third party RAM.
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      434. Also why are seagate drives on their existing compatability lists but now for some reason not good enough for the new 2025 NAS’s ?., whats happened to the drives to suddenly make them not worthy ?.
        Come on Synology explain yourself ?.
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      437. Synology would be much better off charging for support rather than dictating drive “compatibility”. They could, for example, include support for free with their drives and charge something (reasonable) for drives on the compatibility list of previous models (to allow NAS upgrades), and a higher rate for drives not on any compatibility list.
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      438. They want that data center money but that wont happen since if a HDD goes down that means they need to replace with approved HDD only and if they are not in stock the data center loses money waiting on a replacement. The CEO of synology is truly incompetent.
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      441. Haha nice explanation Synology – let me summarize:
        Sales figures are down because we are not offering something customers want and line MUST go up, plus we will have to support our customers less. Win Win… except for customer.

        I will vote with my wallet…FTSIO ????
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      444. Synology is NOT a HHD and SSD manufactory. Their drives are ONLY OEM (do not know where). Unless the policy change, I will not buy their products anymore.
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      446. I’m very disappointed. I bought my first Synology in 2013. I currently have two rack mounts, one for data, one for backup. I have to 923’s at my son’s house to provide storage for my grand daughter while she is going through college. Again, one for data and one for backup. Then I have off sight storage between the two houses.

        I’ve also recommended and help set up Synology for a number of friends.

        So, where am I going to be headed? Definitely not Synology. They are throwing out the people who helped build their market.

        For me, probably Unifi NAS. I like the operating system of Synology, but it’s not required and there are many other choices. It will be a while before I make changes and I’m sure that other companies are going to jump at the chance or increasing their product share which hopefully means high powered processors and more capability from these manufacturers

        As a side note, having had 8 synology NAS’s over the last 12 years and having used drives considered obsolete, well used, brand new, certified used, the only problems I’ve had is an occasional drive go bad. How much more compatible can a device be?

        Oh, and one last thought, how long will they support firmware and software upgrades for these “old, out of date” models? Probably not long.
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      447. compared to other people bitching and moaning oh down with synology.

        I’m more inclined to wait and see how this pans out, the logical thing would be that they limit the NASes to use their own drives AND verified/tested/approved 3rd party drives which would make sense if they want to bring down drive issue related problems by internally validating 3rd party drives.

        its possible that the compatibility page for the 25 models just haven’t validated 3rd party drives yet and only their ones.

        thats the best case scenario, worse one is that they are only going to support their own drives, in which case there will be a lot of backlash.

        for now Ill wait and see compared to others already jumping to conclusions and raising their pitchforks
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      448. Overpriced yet under specified and now highly restrictive and heavily proprietary. Unbelievable

        Went over to self build Unraid system. Wow, what a huge difference for my Plex only system. Wish I’d made the change years ago
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      451. Off topic, but I’m impressed by how not-immediately obvious the AI voice is. A little disturbing, but still impressive.

        On topic: Guess I’m definitely going with a QNAP NAS. Wish they’d make a 864 / 86whatever it ends up being.
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      452. Sounds like Synology wants to leverage into more of the business market and away from the home market. Businesses tend to lean towards a single point of contact with a vendor (and avoid finger pointing i.e. The hard drive is the problem, no it’s the NAS chassis that is the problem…..). As you said, the home market has choices so I guess I don’t see what the problem is. If Synology fits your use case; great! If it doesn’t, then move on to other choices.

        Down the road Synology will have to decide if it made the right choices for its’ business.
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      453. This is somewhat old news to me, ever since they locked you to their m2s just for a silly pool, and effectively dumped prosumer years ago, none of this is remotely shocking. I just dont understand all the hype for something easy to predict…
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      456. This was very scary.
        I have a 5 year old 8-bay device. If the NAS box breaks, I was under the understanding that a could move my drives to a new nas box.
        I’m using “WD Red Pro NAS Hard Drive – 12TB” with 2 x Samsung nvme as RW cache.
        What if the drives are not support on the new box???
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      457. I’m happy with my Synos as LUN storage. At least this works fine on that v 3 kernel. Would I recommend Syno? As pure NAS, I used to.
        With stuff like ugreen and those little ssd NAS boxes, no, not anymore. I like open systems more.
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      459. Synology is dead to me with this drive policy. Not to mention lack of 10GbE multi gig in 2025 as a default. The software is good but not that good.
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      461. I don’t see how you can currently still recommend Synology. As of now, you HAVE to buy their HDDs for the new models and those cost even more bucks than any sane priced non Synology branded HDD. Which i also find too expensive in the first place. So how the f** am I going to buy an über expensive Synology HDD?
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      462. the fact that they are enforcing this whole method, removes them from my purchase/recommend list. i focus on users taking control of THEIR hardware and data. this is a limit for my customers, and would put ME into a wall with no options. i personally use a Qnap, and have very happy with it.
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      464. They no greedier than any company. The problem is their dsm is so standout. They are trying to capture more of the pie. Their mgt should be fired for not doing what all major tech companies are doing to build a moat around their brand. And capture as much revenue inside the castle. (Google workspace pricing, apple ecosystem etc) Whether the cost indifferent appliance user base wins out over the cost sensitive tinkerer user base time will tell. I place great store in the stability and user friendliness of dsm. I will wince at drive pricing but will probably cough up. The problem is there is no competitor close to dsm in sight. And they are milking that. Why not.
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      466. All the unkowns you asked about from 13:44 onwards: if Synology had any interest in being straightforward, they would’ve answered those on Day 1 (today). They didn’t, which means we probably won’t like the answers. These were obvious questions people asked three years ago: it’s not a surprise Synology refused to answer it three years and still today. You seem to be giving them far too much unearned credit, mate.
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      468. Translation we plan to go out of business as we transition to proprietary equipment because we believe we are too big to fail. They forgot what RAID means, Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives… Move along.
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      469. The problem with this whole Synology endeavor is that the Seagate Ironwolf drives I have been using for 5 continuous-never-off years have worked FLAWLESSLY. It ain’t broke. Why are they forcing a fix?
        This makes no sense.

        Also… the last time I updated a hard drives firmware was in 2013 and it was some weird Mac-only compatibility thing. The idea that Synology (who regularly pulls DSM updates and re-releases them) would be the ONLY team in charge of firmware updates to my storage media is terrifying.
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      470. I have a DS1522+ and I was going to switch up from 5x12TB drives (shucked + a couple of Reds) to 5x20TB (all shucked). I’d already picked up 3 of the Elements units before this all blew up. While I can continue with my plan I’ve lost total confidence in the brand. My natural instinct would be to go for a 6 or 8 bay down the line but the whole murky situation of moving a drive pool to DS**25+ model and what restrictions (or not) that may bring is not something I’d want to get involved in. So I’m seriously considering bringing my plans forward and starting afresh with a 6 bay QNAP TS-664. Shame.
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      472. It really looks like the 920+ may have been the peak I had been hoping to upgrade and move forward with newer models into the future but it’s really looking like I will need to move onto another system once it’s time to upgrade????
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      473. Synology is very disappointing. First, I wait years for them to finally embrace 2.5Gbit. Now this money grab on HDD support! Pathetic. Another example of stupid leadership likely only looking for $$$ and not realizing they are destroying themselves.
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      478. The question needs to be asked, if you can only use Synology drves, why even stick with standards like SATA and NVMe? I guess they’ve crunched the numbers and think they might sell some drives to Asustor, QNAP and Ugreen customers…The part that bothers me most is that one of the things I like about NAS is its flexibility. You start with a four-bay NAS, but some drives in it, and then in the future, you decide to migrate it to more drives or larger capacities. If you must have Synology drives, it assumes you have a clear idea of what you will do with the hardware and how much space you need from the outset. Or you’ll be buying even more Synology-branded drives six months later. So much for system evolution…I predict the kickback from this plan will be brutal.
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      484. This is the beginning of the end of the dominance of large consumer NAS manufacturers, only HP has more cheeky behavior with their statements. DIY and OpenSource were already slowly burying them, and after a dozen small Chinese manufactories joined the process, the future of companies like Synology in the consumer market is very vague!
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      486. Well, I’m looking to replace my ageing 4-bay Synology DS416j.

        This sort of anti-consumer nonsense has helped me make the decision not to buy another Synology NAS, so that’s -1 customer for them.
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      491. I’ve been holding off migrating from my old DS1815+, but this mess has helped me decide to just switch to a DS1522+ with a 10 GbE card while they’re still available. Should serve me well for another 8-10 years! ????
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      493. Rebranding Toshiba and Seagate drives and doubling the price tag is pure greed. Hopefully some EU regulator steps in and bans sale of Synology products in EU.
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      494. Even as a Chinese, sometimes I have no idea why these Taiwan tech companies keep doing things like that, greed alone can’t explain this, this is stupid and greed beyond normal human standards.
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      497. Bye bye Synology… Not buying their drives “just because”… Besides, their hardware isn’t really as powerful as it should be for the price that is paid. The only reason I stuck with them versus building my own is because I liked the apps and their attention to security but if they are going to make purchasing their drives a requirement for the “Plus” models, that is where I get off their train. I don’t think they understand their ProSumer / Consumer customers. What I don’t understand is why they can’t just let us use the drives and make a disclaimer that they will not support the models using 3rd party drives if the drives are the cause of the problem, rather than not letting us use them at all. Just another big company doing stupid big company things!
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      498. Synology have completely lost their minds and this will kill their business. Their reasons are all obviously lies and it’s insulting they even try to trick us with them. I wouldn’t mind if their drives were easier to get and good value for money, but they’re neither. They’ve made their new hardware only work with drives no one can or will buy. People will just buy different hardware that can use the drives they can get.
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      499. The only thing i am waiting for is if they restrict drives for all the OLD models once they figure out no one buys the new ones any longer… I could see that happen.
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      502. Let me get this right Seagate make Synology drives, but Seagate nas drives aren’t up to their standards. Let’s be honest Synology are trying to kill of their consumer side of the business because they can’t compete against new players.
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      506. Synology looks right now like Apple pre the M1, where the software experience was premium but the overall value was affected by its lacking on hardware. There is no workaround on hardware, the ecosystem is always compesable by docker images and maybe Ugreen can surprise with better software experience in the future turning their products more future-proof than Synology ones.
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      507. Hello. I’m new and I need help choosing an NAS system to synchronize and share data in mobile devices and computers(photos, videos, files, etc.). I wanted to ask someone which system they’d recommend me to use, synology ds923+ or UGREEN NASync DXP4800. Or any other suggestions. Thanks
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      509. I think UGREEN has a pileline of new software developing and no one can guarantee that UGREEN will not eventually beat SYNOLOGY few years down the road. The biggest shame for SYNOLOGY is that it is cutting down on some of its software including video station. What a shame ???
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      510. I’m a little new to plex and looking to upgrade to a Nas server mainly for 4k move streaming i was looking at both of these Nas also the Ds224+ but i think the 4 bay may be easier to had HDD in the future. Which of these Nas would you recommend for plex only use. Thanks or even other recommendations thanks you.
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      512. I understand that it tickles when a new product comes on the market with extremely strong hardware, but let’s stay real and down to earth, because without good smart software you can do very little. It is a Ferrari or shiny Lamborghini without an engine. Even if they bring it in gold, it must be reliable and stable and above all functional. We as consumers would really like to see it differently, faster network ports and a thick core. But are you going to need it, is that 10Gb applicable, is that 5Gb applicable. And is that 2.5Gb really 2.5Gb during your transfer, or do you first have to invest in your network by buying new more expensive switches. I certainly think it is positive, but first wait and see for 12 months from now. And then I will see how this brand and NAS has developed.
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      513. This didn’t age well, $1200 for 6 bay and $1500 for 8 bay is definitely not cheaper the Synology or QNAP solutions. Not to mention Ugreen is not power efficient e.g. AOOSTAR WTR PRO with 8 core Ryzen beats it by like 50% at power usage.
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      515. I truly wish I could leave the clouds for a nas. Currently we use Google Drive to share files in my family and with our students. We also stuck with iCloud to record from 5+ security cameras in the Apple Home ecosystem. While we figured out how to implement all that, Synology, Qnap, WD, etc. has intimated us to fork over the bucks to the clouds. Do you find your viewers sharing positive plans implementing a nas with their Apple ecosystem?
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      516. A lot of Synology’s mobile Apps (DS Video, etc) look like they were designed by a 5 year old in 1995, there is an argument that Synology go for quantity over quality when it comes to their mobile apps.
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      518. If all you need is a NAS to file share between computers and connect to an Apple TV box, does software even matter? Found a UGREEN 2 bay NAS that has an N100 chip in so it’ll be pretty power efficient, any reason not to buy this over a Synology or QNAP?
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      520. Do you have a video on how to change the ports. You mentioned it as a security improvement, but I also have seen that there are a number of ports numbers I should not choose. If you have a video explaining this can you point it out. I am confused.
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      521. I think your advice should be, to set up a vpn and don’t make the nas accessable from the www directly at all. And at least for qnap the q-firewall with active PSIRT and TOR filter would have been a good hint.
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      522. I prefer the UGREEN NAS , Its hardware is better, the app is more beautiful, the update speed is faster, and the functions may be relatively rudimentary, but I believe that to do better, you need to give it a little time.although I also have Synology, but I’m fed up with its old UI, outdated hardware, and poor app experience, which is too conservative. By the way, they haven’t updated their app for a long time.
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      524. I can see you brought the seagulls along with your holiday, you are a nice person Robbie! (joke!)
        I have a few suggestions to add to your list;
        If you are not going to use or access your NAS during the holiday, turn-off your NAS and disconnect *all* the cables.
        Why? During the summer the changes for thunderstorms are significantly higher, and when you are not at home, you won’t be able to take measures to pull the cables when a thunderstorm is arriving in the distance.
        When you are away on holiday, maybe bring your NAS with your valuable data to family/friends for safe-keeping, in case of burglars or, God forbid, a fire or other electrical mishaps, (such as an overheating powersupply with the temperatures of nowadays), broken waterpipes, overflowing sewer and other things that can happen when you are away.
        And as for security, when you are going to use your NAS abroad, prior to your trip, please do remove (or disable) the Apps you won’t be using. That way you will reduce the attack-service. Remember, even with encrypted data, or a VPN, some applications will initially communicate outside such “secure” tunnels and make their presence known, luring the bad persons to your NAS/connections etc. Use it or loose it (for your applications/apps)
        BTW, I recommend clearing all the logs of the NAS prior to departure.
        When you return it is a bit more convenient to investigate if any noteworthy happened to or on your NAS.
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      525. I wireguard to my network, then access NAS.
        Hyperbackup from remote site through ipsec ospf between two tunnels for failover.
        Synology drive is to be implemented.
        No direct acess unless through VPN as mentioned above.
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      526. 10:05 – question about the certificates. My DS423+ has a default Synology certificate, and then an RSA/ECC certificate for QuickConnect. But my DS120J which I bought secondhand a couple weeks ago only has a Synology certificate. Any idea why I’ve got the RSA one as well? It expires on 17th Sept. Gonna be taking the DS120J to my brother’s place soon so it’s always going to be remote through QuickConnect.
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      529. Going to the holiday is no excuse to secure your Nas. It should be secure. Otherwise you can better shutdown or disconnect it from the Internet.
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      531. I have a bunch of pictures and a few (not home) movies on my NAS. Why would I care if it is secure or not? Experian already got hacked and all of my most sensitive info is already floating around the dark web. My info has been hacked in multiple other businesses. It’s too late to worry about security.
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      533. Usually I do manual updates on my NAS units. In the past I have even opted to install a QNAP QTS beta firmware update. However, beta and release candidates make me nervous so for now I try to wait for official releases. That is a bit of a paradox though.
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      536. Can you please comment on the power draw at idle (with 1nvme+ and 3 sata+ drives) and while writing and reading files saturating the 10gbe link on the ugreen?
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      538. I know it’s a gray area legally, but how about Xpenology on the Ugreen hardware? I haven’t seen much info about people trying it. Could really give the best of both worlds!
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      540. As someone who is running unraid on a UGreen DXP4800-Plus I don’t think the interesting or fair comparison is UGreen vs Synology it’s UGreen vs DIY. The UGOS is too new and too unreliable for anyone who needs a rock solid storage solution to trust it where as synology’s NASs just work. That said you get good hardware at a price that is only slightly more than DIY when you buy the UGreen (assuming a small discount over suggested retail). So it makes a convenient platform to install UNRaid, Trunas, Proxmox or similar OS on – at which point it blows synology out of the water.
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      541. I on a Synology NAS, but I will be seriously looking at the UGreen products. The pricing of NAS systems is out of touch with the user. Synology should be way ahead, but long in the tooth. UGreen has to make a Synology-like interface while innovating there too. Time will tell, butI’m glad they’re here.
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      542. Got a Synology because it has easy Software and a lot of very good Documentation. Maybe one day I will upgrade to something else…but honestly, I have more CPU on that Synology then my first gaming PC, so I am good ????
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      543. Ultimately its price, so if Ugreen keeps it close to their launch, as I hope, then they will sell. if not, they will have a turnoff crowd, and it will stay as a slow sale.Nothing hard these days to get a small or mini PC and run it as a NAS.
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      544. Oh come on! How much software do you need for a NAS? lol…I have had my junky Synology 6Bay that cost almost 1000$(company paid for it, I would never buy it at half that prioce, just build my own with Free NAS), and Synology is slow loud DOG! The SSD, and the connectivity is great on UGreen. Also Synology is constantly updating and some features are gone, AND some are bloating…Besides their hardware on this one at least had issues, and they DENIED fixing their bad chip/transistors or power supply issue that is ALL over the internet is a shame on them for support.
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      546. Let’s see the next 2-3 years and where all of the NAS manufacturers will go in terms of hardware, software, security and support. But quite honestly from my point of view a push in that area is very welcome, and this certainly has been done by Ugreen.
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      547. With all the new ugreen users out there I would love to see a docker overview/walkthrough. Almost a docker basics as it relates to the ugreen app. Maybe walk through an install and discuss how docker works, what the settings mean, how to read/follow documentation, and how they are setup in the Ugreen OS
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      549. I do take exception with the statement of “Synology’s do not support them”, its not that Synology does not support specific HDD’s, RAM or NVMe’s. As they do support them – all drives, RAM, NVMe etc follow strict industry standards, and that is baked into the Linux kernel.

        No, the real issue is, Synology trying evey trick to discourage this, in efforts to upsell their own branded components… which let face it, they don’t actually create, they are just generic components with a Synology sticker on it,… then sold with a 300-400% mark-up.
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      550. Important thing to consider is that Ugreen is a Chinese company completely subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party. It doesn’t matter what the company says or thinks about this party control. Chinese law dictates this subordinance. It’s lunacy to give full access to all your files and have it connected to Internet. The NAS literally can scan and analyze all files and photos to then send all relevant data to China for it to have thumb on any person who have Ugreen NAS.
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      552. I’ve got a Ugreen Nasync, and it’s very good on the hardware side. I’m just going to replace the 140mm fan for a quieter one.

        And the UGOS is actually usable and improving quickly. It still needs work, but I was expecting much worse.

        Having said this, I’ve installed TrueNAS Scale on it for the time being. In some months from now, I’m going to see the improvements on the Ugreen and evaluate if I should change back.
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      554. Synology moving away from the prosumer market, is making all of us to become proficient with Truenas and connected apps that replicate Synology’s functionality. This will impact Synology’s future market share.
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      555. Ugreen can literally eat Synology.. Synology keeps making bad decisions especially in the hardware department. I cant use whatever hard drive i want? when everything else on this planet i can basically do that?? gtfo. Synology creating an eco system okay… go ahead you wont like the results. Ugreen, they are starting off, and the community able to put on whatever OS holy crap man.. like i want one and as soon as i can afford it, im going Ugreen.
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      556. If you want easy but restrictive software and reliable but antique hardware, go with the Synology. If you prefer flexibility through cli, don’t go with Synology. After over a decade with Synology, Ugreen looks like a potential new direction.
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      558. Have the 6800, swapped the stock nvme out, upgraded the ram, loaded TrueNAS on it, and currently testing all my drives. No complaints thus far and this thing was impossible to beat when looking at the hardware. For those of us that are in IT or tinker it was a no-brainer.
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      560. I recon a better comparison, is Terramaster vs Ugreen, as they are closer to each other than Synology, in terms of price and software (TOS)
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      561. This is a fair comparison. UGreen NAS is still not as battle tested as Synology at this time, and I think it might be worth it for someone who wants to buy their first NAS and has nothing to lose; but it might not be as worth it for people who already have a NAS setup that they don’t want to risk messing up.
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      562. Can you revisit the ugreen nas when the software is finished or in 1 to 2 year and do a software review to see what has changed and improved in that time
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      565. Bought the DXP8800 Pro with the i7 direct from China ecommerce website. Added 64GB DDR5 and installed TrueNAS Scale. Never happier with the decision to go with Ugreen.
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      566. if i need mix and matched drive sizes and 12 bays minimum am i forced to go with synology with script to allow for unsupported drives or terramaster TRAID with buggy/unreliable software, Are there other options? from what i can tell even for custom systems the only properly allowing for mix and match is unraid but from playing around with it seems alittle unfinished and no built in scrubbing/bitrot prevention, am i wrong, are there other choices? thanks
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      568. Hope UGreen takes on both the top two brands with better pricing and newer hardware. The top brands use old hardware but charge a ridiculous premium price.
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      570. What bothers me about Synology and others is the exactly the applications. Yeah, some are handy and all. But it’s a NAS, not a Server. Make it secure, fast, efficient and usable. Don’t waste resources on gimmicky features and crap. Maybe VM and Container support… If necessary

        Applications should run on a separate System. Period.
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      572. Imo, synology Android apps suck. The audio app has antiquated interface and it’s very inconvenient to use.
        Their app for notes isn’t even compatible with my sgs22. Their video app I don’t even want to mention, it’s useless. And actually I don’t like many apps, you have to log in separately, think which app to laugh in each case… There should be options to launch the single app to the needed section from the launcher (one could do it via a widget and activities which you could call from any advanced launcher, so that you could open e.g. audio, file manager, and photos individually
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      573. Intel was complacent with their CPUs until AMD released their Ryzen line. Competition is nice here, as Synology and QNAP have not updated their hardware in what… 7 years?
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      577. Just had to get a new NAS, and I went with another Synology. I’d love the better hardware of the UGreen, but at the end of the day I just can’t trust all my work and data to something that still isn’t proven. Maybe with the next upgrade, and if Synology still haven’t woken up and upped their hardware offer, I’ll go with a UGreen if the OS has matured. Just can’t take the risk with my real word stuff. If I can get one cheap though, I might just pull the trigger for a little hobby project.
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      578. Ugreen official channel in taobao is selling similar kickstarter backer price now. For the backers, please don’t think you are getting special price.
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      580. Another excellent video. Fair to say that a comparison is applicable now that the Kickstarter has concluded. Early days yet but they’ve jumped into the deep end now,….lets see if UGreen can swim.

        Since many of us UGreen NAS users will likely install a third party OS, it might be beneficial to have a UGOS backup / OS image tutorial. I say this because presumably some of the warranty support is dependent on the native OS and there doesn’t seem to be a UGreen UGOS download repository.
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      581. For someone who has never thought about having a NAS, and knows nothing about them, I am just wanting to make it a movie and music server, I have a couple questions. What are the hdmi, thunderbolt and other ports used for? I just received my ugreen DXP4800 plus and am currently watching videos trying to understand what everything is for. From what I have seen, I think I should have got a DAS System, but now have a NAS and want to show movies on my Apple TV units. Should I sell the NAS and get a DAS? Thank you for your input.
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      584. Although Synology did not officially announce (AFAIK) any new “consumer/prosumer” NAS devices, there seem to signs that they might be (in the process of) responding to the hardware value proposition from recent releases from Ugreen and to some extend TerraMaster (specifically the F4-424 Pro – which could be had for an amazing value with the D8 DAS via TerraMaster’s kickstarter).
        The 923+ is no longer “sold by Amazon” on its website. Also, B&H is selling it at a 20% discount at the time of writing this comment – which some say could indicate release of Synology’s replacement models in near future.
        Great video as always provided valuable information to help me with my NAS purchase decision (incl Synology, Ugreen and TerraMaster). Keep up the great work. ????

        Edited to add: Everyone keeps pointing to the vast library of software that Synology has – which is true. However, IMHO that is analogous to the early days of smartphones where marketing campaigns would point to how many apps were available in iOS store or Android Store etc. But how relevant is the “long list of software library” argument IF Ugreen (or some of the other smaller manufacturer) offers ALL the core software that one would want, coupled with their – at present – superior hardware offering? For instance, for home usage, one may be interested in the NAS doing “more” tasks like being Plex transcoder/server, etc. But for a business just looking to reliably backup data and nothing else, perhaps a different brand/product might provide better value? Now, software maturity, customer service/warranty support and longevity of offerings in this segment is a different discussion.
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      585. Basically, if you haven’t had a NAS before and wants something that just work… get a Synology NAS. If you want a basic NAS with good hardware and you know your way on how to tinker in Linux & docker, getting a UGreen NAS can be fun and adventurous! ????
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      587. It’s all well and good talking about Ugreen stuff but the problem is they are not available unless you spend wonga on a kickstarter – which I personally woild never do with a company as big as this, it basically means they don’t have any risks whatsoever but the poor sod paying the wonga could if it all goes tits up, which many do. It seems they have built enough units for the Youtube pluggers. What I want to know is when they will be available on the general market.
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      589. Excellent video as usual I am watching them all because I would like one but in Italy we do not know if and when they will sell it. I found one on EBay but then the warranty? The updates?
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      592. I have the 4800plus and in the process of migrating my data from my Synology to it. For my use case as backup target and media server, the ugreen Software is enough. Couldn’t be happier about the hardware! With 40% off, the Kickstarter price was a steal 😉
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      593. Unfortunately Synology slept on their gem software with outdated hardware and shitty HDD/SSD restrictions.. I am looking for other options. Solid NAS hardware with software of my choice will be a way to go. Ofc Xpenology users will do their thing.
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      594. I really kinda wish I had the money to hold on for the Kickstarter because it was such a great deal, but unfortunately, I had to let it go. But if you’re right about the MSRP pricing, I’d still be curious to see what the actual pricing breaks down to at official retail launch, because I’m sure from a hardware perspective it will still be a better bang for the buck than other options currently available.
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      595. I had the worst weekend fighting the shortcomings of this new NAS with UGOS. I’ve the 6-bay pro one, and let alone the SW limitations, every single reboot it would have problems recognizing the HDDs, every single time I’ve to repair the RAID. This is the most unreliable piece of HW I ever bought.
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      596. I also have the 3-bay UGREEN NAS and it seems promising so far. I just cannot get the AI models to work in my photos folder no matter what, and I feel like I’ve tried everything at this point. Very frustrating, and it’s making me hesitant to move all of my stuff over if I’m gonna have to format and restart all over to get the models working.
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      597. Who wants to place a wager on how long it’s going to take for the first crypto locker to hit Ugreen’s OS? I would rather run DSM on a brick than any brand new operating system on shiny new hardware.
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      598. I received my DXP8800-Plus a couple of weeks ago. Promptly upgraded RAM to 64GB and installed TrueNAS Scale on it. Couldn’t be happier, hardware was all I cared about so software by others was not a factor.
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      599. Thanks again. I asked a ? About your Plex vid. I installed before your vid but without the /data and /transcode folder. ? What does the / data folder do? My Plex works without it. Also does the /transcode folder make HT to work? Numerous people say HT won’t work with the UGREEN docker install. Thanks.
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      600. I ordered the 6 bay, and finally this weekend received notice that it should arrive tomorrow.
        Synology has great software, but they are really dropping the ball on hardware. Synology should be concerned about this perception, since I own 3 of their NAS.
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      601. Proud owner of the DXP8800-Plus, but did in fact install Unraid on it. Your videos were the sole reason for my purchase and I wouldn’t be surprised if every backer has seen your videos as well as UGREEN. Love the additional videos you’re doing in the series.
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      603. Not really fair to compare an OS from a shipping-for-a-week NAS vs one that’s got 25 years behind it. I so wish I had ordered an 8-bay unit on Kickstarter. I did get the all-flash unit, which is very nice, but I don’t actually have a use for it.
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      605. Things indeed seemed to have changed; Synology is apparently abandoning the home/SoHo market?
        Or at least not putting much more efforts into it, no new models/updates for such users?
        I guess Synology has put their heads down and now leave it to the competitors, so it seems?
        Yes, Synology’s software seems to be the more smoother experiences but at a very hefty price.
        (and, to me, not that impressive hardware…)
        With all due respect, the fact that UGreen opted to (limited-region) crowd-funding I find a very odd choice.
        And to me personally, UGreen is still to me a charger-company, not a NAS company, they just started in that arena.
        If any, I would wait another year to learn how UGreen progresses.
        One piece of software, like UGreen is easier to maintain than a catalog of applications?
        If I would be in the market for such a solution, I would most definitely go for a Jonsbo solution or perhaps SilverStone and roll my own.
        BTW, recently Synology was also attacked by ransomware, surprised you seemed not to give attention to that?
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      608. I wonder how many NAS-buyers do need the extra hardware power that UGreen offers. I might be wrong but I think that the typical NAS-user uses his NAS for Plex, music, photos, data backup/storage and some Docker-containers.
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      610. Help. Has anyone tested a board for ssd disks from another manufacturer? Judging by the board of this brand, it does not differ from its analogues M2D20 card.
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      611. ugreen website is already terrible to begin with, no traces of ugreen nas, so I give 0 points for any support so far,
        meanwhile synology dsm can be downloaded onto xpenology without buying actual hardware to get a better idea what to buy…
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