Synology in 2026 – What Have They Got Planned?

The Synology Solution 2025/2026 Event – What Was There?

At Synology’s UK Solutions Exhibition 2025, the company marked its 25th anniversary with a detailed look at how it intends to position itself for the next phase of enterprise and private-cloud data management. The event covered a wide spectrum of topics, ranging from backup and storage architecture to surveillance, productivity platforms, and AI governance, with several new products and services scheduled for release in late 2025 and early 2026. Alongside technical presentations and case studies, Synology also addressed contentious issues such as its ongoing hard drive support policy and the balance between on-premises control and cloud services. This article brings together the key takeaways, product roadmaps, and policy updates from the event, supplemented with insights gathered through direct conversations with Synology staff across multiple sessions.

The TL;DR – Here is what’s NEW/Coming Soon

  • Synology DVA7400 12 Bay Rackmount (GFX Card, etc)
  • Synology DVA3000 4-Bay (seemed like somewhere between the DVA3221 and DVA1622
  • Semantic Video Search in Surveillance Station
  • Dynamic Mosaic and Smoke Detection in Surveillance Station
  • Updates on info for the PAS and GS Systems (eg Cluster Manager)
  • More info and lite usage demo of the managed switches
  • Same cameras shown from Computex event, but also a “Synology SD Card” (?!?)that is managed in Surveillance Station
  • Active Protect tweaks and improved comms with ABB
  • Synology Chat Plus and Meets (Video Conferencing software)
  • Synology NAS with GFX/GPU Card that can host local LLM
  • Synology Tiering

Before We Go Any Further – We STILL Have to Discuss Synology Hard Drive Compatibility!

Synology’s hard drive support policy was a recurring topic throughout the event and in direct conversations with staff. The subject was formally addressed in the opening session, where the company framed its approach as a strategic decision to validate and support selected drives for reliability and lifecycle assurance. In a later Q&A with a large Synology customer, the policy came up again, though the exchange felt somewhat staged. Away from the stage, I spoke with almost a dozen Synology team members on and off the record. The consistent message was that verification of Seagate and Western Digital drives is still in progress, but I also received conflicting off-the-record remarks about how validation and support could be expanded in the future. A follow-up article and video from me on this subject will be published soon to explore the matter further.

“As workloads scale and data becomes even more critical. We’ve made the strategic decision to fully validate and support scenario drives in our solution.
This means that we take an end to end responsibility for performance, reliability and long-term availability by managing both hardware and the software stack.
We intend to show you that we can deliver deeper integration, such as real-time health monitoring, predictive risk analysis and seamless firmware updates, all designed to reduce risk and maximise uptime.

This change is not about limiting choice, it’s about accountability. When you deploy a Synology solution, you can be confident that we stand behind every component and that you’ll receive a system optimised for performance and reliability over its entire lifestyle. And for our partners, this also means fewer unknowns of deployment and support, greater predictability and stronger value for your customers. Together, we can focus less on troubleshooting and more on helping businesses innovate, securely.”

The official position is that tighter control of hardware compatibility will improve integration features like predictive monitoring and firmware management, while reducing deployment risks. However, Synology repeatedly stressed that the policy is not yet final, with feedback from customers and partners still under review. From my discussions, the messaging suggests that although Synology’s stance is rooted in system accountability, the practical implications for users—particularly regarding Seagate and WD models such as IronWolf and Red or surveillance-focused drives like SkyHawk and Purple—remain unsettled. The lack of clarity points to an ongoing process where official announcements may evolve, but for now customers are being told the policy is about creating a more reliable platform rather than restricting options.

Introduction to Synology – 25 Years On

The opening session of Synology’s UK Solutions Exhibition marked the company’s 25th anniversary with a review of its history, current reach, and overall strategy. Synology reported that it has 14 million installations worldwide, is protecting around 25 million entities and servers, and manages more than 2 million accounts. Case examples were used to illustrate different applications, including the Imperial War Museum’s video archive workflows, Toyota’s use of scalable backup and disaster recovery, and surveillance and crowd management deployments using Synology cameras and DVA units. The presentation also provided background on the company’s origins in 2000 and the development of DSM as its Linux-based operating system. DSM was described as having grown from a small-business storage platform into a wider environment that spans file management, surveillance, backup, cloud services, and productivity, positioned between consumer-focused devices and enterprise systems.

The session also focused on the conditions in which these systems now operate. Trends highlighted included increasing architectural complexity from hybrid and cloud deployments, stricter compliance and regulatory requirements, persistent security threats, and ongoing budget constraints. Synology framed its approach around four design principles: integrating hardware and software into a single platform, embedding security features from the outset, simplifying management to reduce reliance on specialist expertise, and ensuring predictable long-term costs rather than shifting expenses over time. A notable point was the company’s drive compatibility and accountability policy. Synology stated that it will validate and support specific hard drives and SSDs to provide real-time monitoring, firmware updates, and lifecycle assurances. However, the company also acknowledged that it is still assessing customer and partner feedback on the subject of drive and SSD verification, indicating that its position may continue to evolve. The presentation ended with an invitation to engage with Synology staff during the event and a transition to the next session on data protection.

New / in-progress / future items mentioned:

  • Synology’s drive compatibility and accountability policy, with integrated monitoring, firmware management, and lifecycle support.

  • Synology confirmed it is still assessing customer and partner feedback on hard drive and SSD verification, leaving open the possibility of adjustments.

Synology and Data Storage Now/Future

Active Protect and the DP series was once again a heavy presence at this event and was more formally presented as Synology’s hardware-plus-software backup appliance family, structured around three guarantees: isolation, visibility, and auditability. It combines technologies such as high-rate deduplication (up to 80%), btrfs checksums with self-healing, immutability at the primary backup layer tied to retention policies, VM-based backup verification and sandboxing, and software-driven offline air-gap replication. These measures are positioned as protection against common and combined attack chains, including phishing, stolen credentials, ransomware, insider threats, and zero-day exploits. Large-scale management is enabled through clustering (tested with over 2,500 nodes and 150,000 endpoints), protection plans, and failover between backup servers to avoid single points of failure. Audit logs can be forwarded to external SIEMs and long-term retention is supported via Synology’s Secure Scalable Storage with WORM. Case studies included a Japanese bank with six appliances across DR sites, a Taiwanese logistics company consolidating over ten devices, and Toyota, which migrated away from tape to Active Protect in 2025, citing reduced costs and improved resilience.

The presentation framed the wider context as one where 70% of organisations have experienced data loss or attacks and 88% of those were unable to recover. The strategy was outlined as layered: employee education, least-privilege delegated administration, and backup as the final line of defence. Technical implementation details highlighted cloning instead of full copying, policy-driven immutability, VM-based verification, and software-controlled air-gap mechanisms as ways to achieve isolation and restore confidence. Visibility was addressed through centralized portals, cluster management, and protection plan broadcasting across sites, while auditability was achieved through extensive telemetry, monitoring, and immutable log storage. The brand also noted that it is working to further improve connectivity between Active Protect appliances and Active Backup for Business-equipped devices, aiming to strengthen multi-site operations and incremental migration paths. Deployment was described as end-to-end through Synology appliances, with hot spares and replacement hardware options to maintain recovery point objectives. The solution was positioned as an integrated alternative to mixed third-party systems, with the trade-off being a reliance on Synology’s single-vendor model for both hardware and software.

New / in-progress / future items mentioned:

  • Active Protect appliance family: integrated hardware-plus-software backup solution with isolation, visibility, and auditability features.

  • Protection plans and clustering: centralized policies for managing thousands of endpoints and enabling cross-site disaster recovery.

  • Software-based air-gap replication: offline replication without tape media, controlled through software and network port management.

  • VM-based backup verification and sandboxing: integrated hypervisor for validating and testing backups.

  • Planned improvements to connectivity between Active Protect and Active Backup devices to strengthen multi-site operations and integration.

Robust, Scalable and Fast Storage Now and the Future

This session focused on Synology’s enterprise storage portfolio and its positioning across security, efficiency, scalability, and performance requirements. The company reported that it currently manages around 350 exabytes across roughly 260,000 businesses and highlighted product families for flash, hybrid, and high-capacity storage. Security was presented as a three-stage process (protect, detect, recover), incorporating measures such as multi-factor sign-in, encryption, immutable snapshots, Active Insight monitoring, and replication. This was also where we saw a reference (2nd time this year) to the multi-site storage tiering service ‘Synology Tiering’ – catchy name, right? Sadly, this does not appear to be a deployment model that can be done inside a single system (ala QNAP QTier).

Efficiency claims included up to 5:1 data reduction, thin provisioning, automated tiering, and hybrid cloud integration with C2 and Hybrid Share. Hybrid Share adoption was noted at over 1,400 enterprises and 3,500 sites, with features such as edge caching and global file locking to support multi-site collaboration. The GS series (notably GS3400) was introduced as a scale-out solution for unstructured data, supporting up to 48 nodes, 11.5 PB per cluster, SMB and S3 protocols, and managed centrally with the GridStation Manager software and its dedicated Cluster Manager GUI.

At the performance end, Synology presented the PAS series, including the PAS 7700 all-NVMe U.3 rackmount system and a 12-bay SATA SSD version. PAS systems run on new Parallel Active Manager software and feature active-active dual controllers, RAID TP (triple parity), rate bitmap rebuilds, and cache protection. Demonstrations covered VDI boot storms, large-scale SQL databases, and EDA simulations, with claims of sub-millisecond latency and throughput in the tens of gigabytes per second. Security measures include network isolation, VLANs, and self-encrypting drives. The GS and PAS series were described as extending Synology’s ecosystem from large-scale archival storage to ultra-low-latency mission-critical workloads, all linked through C2 cloud services, Active Insight monitoring, and policy-driven automation. The company also indicated that further improvements are underway to enhance connectivity between Active Protect appliances and Active Backup devices, enabling more integrated multi-site operations.

The demonstrations of the PAS 7700 system were used to illustrate performance under realistic enterprise workloads. In one scenario, a virtual desktop infrastructure with 1,000 desktops was booted simultaneously to highlight predictable behavior during “boot storm” events. A second demonstration focused on SQL database operations, where over 1,000 concurrent users generated mixed read/write activity, reportedly sustaining more than one million IOPS at approximately one millisecond latency. The third example involved an electronic design automation (EDA) simulation handling around 1,300 jobsets, used to demonstrate the system’s ability to maintain consistent throughput and ultra-low latency under computationally intensive conditions. These scenarios were intended to show how the all-NVMe architecture and active-active controller design could deliver stable, high-performance output across diverse mission-critical environments.

New / in-progress / future items mentioned:

  • GS series (GridStation): scale-out storage, GS3400 unit, up to 48-node clusters and 11.5 PB per cluster, managed by GridStation Manager with Cluster Manager GUI.

  • PAS series: new enterprise rackmount systems, including the PAS 7700 all-NVMe U.3 48-bay system and a 12-bay SATA SSD version, with active-active controllers.

  • Parallel Active Manager software: new management layer for PAS systems.

  • Planned improvements to connectivity between Active Protect and Active Backup devices for enhanced multi-site integration.

Synology Surveillance Station, New DVA3000, DVA7400, Synology SD Card, Switches and More

This section outlined Synology’s surveillance strategy, built on two platforms: the on-premises Surveillance Station VMS and the new cloud-based Synology C2 Cloud VSaaS. Both are designed to scale across large environments, with CMS central management tested at around 3,000 hosts and 30,000 cameras, and real-world deployments exceeding these figures. Features include open APIs for third-party integration, drag-and-drop monitoring, E-maps, and bulk provisioning tools for rapid deployment.

AI capabilities are available on-camera and on-appliance, with functions such as people/vehicle detection, face recognition, license plate recognition, dynamic mosaic (privacy blurring), and smoke detection. An upcoming semantic video search will enable natural-language style queries across historical footage, and is cited as one reason for higher-capacity DVA models.

New hardware introduced includes the DVA3000 (4-bay, 40 cameras, 6 AI tasks) and the DVA7400 (12-bay rackmount, up to 100 cameras, 40 AI tasks, with a GPU included), both expected in early 2026. Additional components include three PoE switches and an industrial-grade microSD card designed for continuous edge recording and health monitoring, though final specifications such as SD card class remain unconfirmed.

C2 Cloud was described as a cloud-managed surveillance option requiring no local NAS or NVR, with built-in AI analytics, centralized access via browser or mobile, and failover to local peer-to-peer streaming when internet is down. The on-premises and cloud platforms are intended to remain separate at launch, though hybrid interoperability is planned in later updates to unify workflows. Security is built into both models, including encryption, MFA, granular access roles, privacy controls, and a product security incident response team supported by a bug bounty program.

Customer examples ranged from schools and stadiums to large government deployments, highlighting scalability, API-based third-party integration, and operational improvements such as automated crowd counting and smoke detection. Licensing continues to follow Synology’s low-overhead approach for on-prem setups, with cloud plans bundling AI features directly. The roadmap places new cameras in Q4 2025 and the DVA models in early 2026, with hybrid operation features to follow.

When asked directly about the status of hard drive compatibility in the new surveillance systems, including whether support would be limited to Synology-branded HDDs or extend to commonly used models such as WD Purple and Seagate SkyHawk, Synology was unable to provide a clear confirmation. The company indicated that final details on drive verification and supported models for these upcoming surveillance platforms remain under review.

New / in-progress / future items mentioned:

  • DVA3000: 4-bay surveillance appliance, 40 camera feeds, 6 AI operations, expected early 2026.

  • DVA7400: 12-bay rackmount model with GPU, up to 100 cameras and 40 AI tasks, expected early 2026.

  • Upcoming semantic video search: natural-language video query functionality.

  • Three new PoE switches for simplified deployment and management.

  • Industrial microSD card with edge recording and health reporting (specifications still unconfirmed).

  • Synology C2 Cloud(cloud VSaaS): cloud-managed surveillance platform, launching with AI features included.

  • Planned hybrid interoperability between Surveillance Station (on-prem) and C2 Cloud (cloud) in future updates.

Synology and AI – New GPU-Equipped Local AI NAS in Development and More Optional AI Integration in Synology NAS

This session focused on Synology’s Office Suite, which is positioned as a private-cloud productivity and communication platform designed to offer enterprises 100% data ownership, on-premises deployment, and long-term cost control. Core services include Drive and Office for file storage and real-time collaboration, Mail Plus for enterprise email, and the upcoming Chat & Meet for messaging and video conferencing. A new AI Console was also introduced, intended to manage and audit AI usage within the suite. The platform targets organizations concerned about rising cloud subscription costs—especially with Microsoft’s announced October 2025 price increases—data sovereignty, and security risks introduced by unsanctioned use of generative AI. Adoption figures cited include over 600,000 businesses and 80 million users.

Synology Drive and Office were presented as tools for structured file management and collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Features include file requests, configurable link sharing, audit logs, watermarking, and remote wiping. A case study from Yonsei University Medical Center highlighted the replacement of a Windows-based file system with Synology Drive, enabling centralized permission management, endpoint oversight, and synchronization across 15,000 employee devices. Mail Plus adds enterprise-grade email features, such as domain sharing for multi-site deployments, active-active clustering for high availability, delegated role management, auditing, and moderation workflows. Together, these services are designed to offer core collaboration and communication functions while preserving organizational control of data and infrastructure.

The roadmap extends the suite with Chat & Meet, an on-premises platform for real-time messaging and video conferencing. It is designed to support over 10,000 simultaneous chat users and 7,000 video participants, integrating channels, group messaging, and video sessions into a single interface. Administrative tools include permission management and migration utilities to ease transitions from existing platforms. Parallel to this, Synology is introducing the AI Console, which addresses risks such as content injection, jailbreaks, and data leakage by providing de-identification, provider management, permission settings, and auditing. The console will also support on-prem GPU-backed AI models for tasks such as semantic search, OCR, and speech-to-text, and is planned to integrate with OpenAI-compatible and self-hosted LLMs via MSCP.

The overarching message is that Synology is extending its productivity ecosystem to address enterprise concerns about cost, security, and compliance while enabling new collaboration and AI capabilities. The suite’s design emphasizes continuity through high-availability clustering, role-based administration, and unified consoles for policy enforcement and auditing. With the AI Console, Synology seeks to embed governance into AI usage, allowing enterprises to adopt advanced tools without exposing sensitive data to uncontrolled environments. Looking forward, further integration of GPU-enabled AI features and the addition of Chat & Meet mark key developments in Synology’s private-cloud strategy, aimed at providing alternatives to mainstream SaaS ecosystems while maintaining operational control.

New / in-progress / future items mentioned:

  • Chat & Meet: on-premises messaging and video conferencing platform, supporting large-scale deployments.

  • AI Console: centralized AI governance with de-identification, provider management, permissions, and auditing.

  • Planned GPU-backed AI models: semantic search, OCR, image recognition, and speech-to-text.

  • Integration with third-party and on-prem AI servers: OpenAI-compatible and self-hosted models via MSCP.

 

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      247 thoughts on “Synology in 2026 – What Have They Got Planned?

      1. I was a happy user running DS220+ with one WD Red 8GB for years. Today I tried installing WD Red Pro to the second slot without success. What the heck, Synology?

        Not buying Ugreen as I have little trust in Chinese companies.
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      2. This a lot of management-talk to say, we want to control the disk-space and want to not only sell you a closed ecosystem, but also have money for every single disk thats sold into our closed eco-system. Synology did to much anti-consumer for me, to even trust them anyomore. I was asked 3 times in just one week, what NAS to buy, my only answer was, “It depends on your needs, never buy Synology”, they asked why, i explained that HDD stuff and all of them were like “f that, thanks for letting me know” and then we taked about their requirements and needs for a NAS.
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      3. It’s ENTIRELY about greed. Adding your own firmware doesn’t make the hard drive substantially better. Also, I assume Seagate and Western Digital know something about manufacturing hard drives for decades that Synology doesn’t.
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      4. Funny how Synology seems to have forgotten the ‘I’ in RAID ????. Their drives are anything but inexpensive, and locking users into their own overpriced disks for their boxes feels like pure blasphemy.
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      5. I was researching Synology Nas a few months ago. The Seagate 16tb Ironwolfe drives were the only drives that a data recovery warranty. The Synology were close to twice the price. Either way, verification is going to cost more money as it should being more work to get it the the ship out the door point. I watched a vid a couple months ago stating Synology wasn’t going to give tech support to non Synology drive users anymore which is why I think the verification of non Synology drives is at this point. Sort like the US Tarriff game thing. Why would by into a non tech support item or spend twice the price? Maybe if there is no other choice. Just my thoughts on the subject.
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      6. The more I think about Synology, the more it reminds me of the battle between Intel and AMD. Almost a decade ago, Intel were the dominant CPU manufacturer. For years, they sat on their laurels, only offering tiny incremental improvements over multiple generations.

        Then, ZEN from AMD burst onto the scene (anyone seeing parallels with Ugreen here?). They offered more for less and disrupted the market. Intel didn’t react for a long time, certain the upstart would go away. Then, when the popularity of the Zen based product gained real traction, Intel panicked, suddenly offering more cores, being forced to eventually lower prices etc.

        Could what’s happening now be the Intel moment for Synology?
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      7. “It’s time to just build out real NAS hardware with real CPUs and memory”

        Unfortunately they won’t do this.. At least a small part of their reasoning for using ameamic CPU’s in the 2025 models, and its the same reason they only offered 1GbE until this year… in public they “Consumers wouldn’t use more, and it would push up prices”, what they really mean is “We can’t risk businesses purchasing them”..

      8. Corporate speak for “we see that we fucked up and that costumers have been running away in large numbers, plus now the shareholders are so angry at us that we need to eat our words and do a 180” ????
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      9. The problem is, this is the second time Synology have done this – they first attempted this in 2019/20, when they lock-in, they massively stripped back their compatability list (for HDDs, RAM and NVMe) and stated it applies to “All business models”, the problem was, they were extremely evasive about what consituted “business models”… They only backed down, or should I say they “clarified”, when the guys at ServerReview entered the ring.

        The this time, they didn’t only strip back the compatability list, they basically emptied it, leaving only their stuff on it, which is all rebranded components, often 3-4x…

        So the term, fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me!

        Also, you only need to look at what their “2026” reveal shows, Synology have zero interest in the SME market, they’re ploughing every penny into Business XaaS products, and their BeeStation.. This is why their 2025 models were so lack-lustre, and were the equivilant of putting lipstick on your granny…

        If I’ve learnt one thing over the past 10 years, once a company starts down a path, they find it very difficult to turn back. So, I suspect the 2025 models will be the last generation of DS+ products, and its better to jump-ship whilst your units still have residual value. I sold mine recently, and surprisingly, it covered the cost of buying some UGREEN units (I would have brought QNAP.. but their kit is also antiquated) and a few upgrades.

      10. There are ways to work this out, but IMO the first thing Synology needs to do is divide the home user from the business user. IE: If you purchase your Synology NAS and Synology drives for a business maybe you pay more to say you are a business, but you get a higher level of support and quicker turn around for drive replacements lets say. This is something NETAPP have been doing for years… you must use their approved drives, but as well, if a drive fails they NETAPP know about immediately ( as the device is always taking to the vendor ) and they will ship you a new drive without you even picking up the phone.

        So what Synology could do for the home user is let you run 3rd party drives, but your support is limited to the software and the NAS unit only, and no support for drives will be included. If you get a drive error, you are on your own or you have to deal with the vendor of the drive.

        The other thing to remember is that this is NOT a hardware issue. The fact that there is a script that can be run to get rid of all the warnings and lockdown issues, yet after running this script, your Synology works fine… tells you it’s just software getting in your way of running the drives you want and not the hardware.
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      11. Given the wishy-washy responses from Syno, my decision to rip Syno out of my network and replace it with TrueNAS was a good one. At least there, I own any faults in my NAS implementation, and I get to use appropriate hardware rather than get stuck with what Syno will (not) give me. Shame, I had a DS712+ that ran fine (for Syno values of “fine”; various NFS issues, mostly) for over a decade before I put the data on a DS420+ (and had the same NFS issues; at least “use NFSv3” was a good enough solution :oP )
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      12. I actually have some sympathy for Synology here … as a not-a-NAS expert, it seems they, AND THEIR CUSTOMERS, were bushwacked by the unannounced appearance of SHR technology in drives that were being sold as NAS-capable. Or at least purchased with that expectation, due to the lack of any “Not Suitable” warnings. That undoubtedly caused an unprecedented tsunami of failures, performance issues, and support costs. Again, for Synology AND THEIR CUSTOMERS. From that point of view, some kind of a “we can’t guarantee what we can’t ensure is up to specs” policy was a reasonable move. But “it’s got to be all-Synology” wasn’t the only way to do that, and in retrospect, was a very bad choice. (And many will say that the reaction from customers and potential customers was entirely predictable. Including me.)

        AFAIK, nothing has changed in the quality of the hardware and software Synology provides. When they re-open the door to allow certified drives from other brands, I think they’re going to have to be extremely competive to get potential customers interested again.
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      13. Thanks for the pinned update, Robbie, from Synology saying they’ve listened to feedback and will accelerate third-party drive verification.
        They’ve had months of overwhelmingly negative feedback, and only now do they say they’ll do something about it? As commentors have pointed out, there were quite a few empty seats at the Synology event.

        Translation: Sales have plummeted, the brand name has been tarnished and we’re looking for a way to fix this. If verification could be “accelerated”, it would’ve been done already. I’ve said this before and maintain this position that Synology had waited to see the pushback and then, only if forced, would magically verify the third-party drives they claimed were somehow inadequate. Had there been little resistance, only minor grumbling and grudging acceptance, they’d have quietly dropped third-party drive verification, or kept kicking it down the road while their 25+ range continued to sell with their own drives.

        As I recall, Synology offloaded verification to the OEM’s. If so, wouldn’t that then also include their own branded drives? Did Synology validate their drives or did Seagate and Toshiba? Synology have been evasive about exactly what verification entails, shrouding the process in mystery and yet validated their own over a year ago or more. Assuming Synology ever intended third-party drives to be used on their 25+ and future series, why wouldn’t those third-party drives have begun the verification process prior to the release of the rebranded drives?

        Alas, they may have closed the barn door after the horse has bolted on this, losing an awful lot of future and repeat customers even if they do allow third-party drives moving forward. This fiasco has done a lot of damage.
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      14. Why when I look for an SSD can I find capacity specs, speed specs but NEVER power specs. All 3 are important to different people in different circumstances. Personally I want high capacity and low power, thats my choice. Since upgrading my NVMe SSD I have had to add a heatsink and drill extra vent holes in my mini PC.

        Whilst this is not directly relevant, it is the problem Synology and others are facing with uncontrolled power in SSD’s. So I understand their compatibily problem.
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      15. It’s completely understandable people are now pissed at Synology, myself included. But let’s view it from another angle.
        It’s true Synology has the weakest hardware for the money, it it took them at least 5 years to catch up with 2.5 Gbe.

        But if you use NAS as a file server and backup/archive machine (as I do exclusively) then they are still the best and safest option out there. Ugreens are powerful, flashy, sexy and what not, but their software is still, well, (u)green :-), still rough around the edges. And being a chinese company who the hell knows if they will be around in a decade or not.
        For a plex and media server you don’t care that much about security but if your business (as small as it may be) depends on backups and archives and snapshots why would you care if their boxes have gpu or 16 core cpu or 128 gb of ram. SW dependability and robustness is what counts the most. Their plus drives are available practically everywhere and priced equally or even less than the comparable drives from Seagate or Toshiba or W(orst)D(rives).

        After using DS414 for almost a decade (still works for another person I gave it to), and now DS923+ for 3 years I had zero problems, zero downtime (except for maintenance) in what 12-13 years. Set it and forget it style.

        If they loosen up the HDD situation (they will) and don’t make ABB subscription based, then I have zero reason to switch to something unknown.

        But as always…. time will tell.

        Peace.
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      16. Synology used to be my go to NAS, and I recommended it to pretty much everyone I know. But with these new HDD restrictions and the outdated hardware in terms of CPU, RAM, and networking. I’m done and I won’t be coming back. Synology brought this on themselves.
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      17. I hate to have to say this…but, in all honesty, I do NOT believe anything Synology is saying on this subject. Part of this is because Synology has provided NO proof that they are actually doing what they claim to be doing, and part of it is based on something Synology has already done. One FACT that we know is that, with previous DS models, Synology ALREADY HAD “verified & approved” drives listed…drives from at least a few companies, although it should be mentioned that the vast majority were primarily Seagate & WD. Adding to this, such was the case even before Synology started releasing drives under their own name. as we also all know, these drives are just rebadged drives, containing a slightly customized firmware (so that the NAS can ‘recognize’ it as a (so-called) “Synology” drive.

        However, sometime over that past few years, the other half of what has been going on is that Synology removed ALL non-Synology drives from the “verified & approved” lists. Obviously, there was NO need OR reason to have done this…other than Synology wanting/trying to increase their own profits. It’s these last two points that lead me to believe Synology is NOT telling the truth. For previous DS model years, and for drives that were already out, there is NO need/reason for having to “reverify”…they ALREADY verified, and proved that those drives worked perfectly well with their hardware, firmware, and software.

        Because of what Synology has been doing these past few years…and, what I HIGHLY SUSPECT they will continue doing…in selecting a second NAS (I’ve converted the older DS to a Plex Server), I opted to go with one of Synology’s competitors (something MANY others have done, and are continuing to do). Furthermore, looking down the road, should I ever have a need to purchase any more NAS units and/or replace the current ones, I HIGHLY doubt I will ever purchase another NAS from Synology. Not only have they pissed off way to many people, but they’ve done it in the absolute worst way possible. Put another way, they are on the “$hit list” of a HUGE number of people…and, if it is even possible for Synology to regain the trust & respect of these people, it’s going to take a LOT of changes, and probably a lot of time.
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      18. Synology is not entering my house, I think im gone find another brand for my need for more storage for my archive.. I need over 120 Tb, shooting RAW film takes huge amount of storage..
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      19. What’s the expert take on when Synology may allow volume resizing? Are they even thinking and talking about making it possible? I have a hard time facing the fact that it cannot be done in DSM and that people are not up in arms about it…
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      20. Bought two Terramaster NAS. One as the master, one for the backup. I do not see, where the software is really worse than Synologys. Hybrid RAID, all the Apps I need. And real Progress between the versions, not cutting back things like in DSM (Video Station, h.265/h.265,VC1-support, AAC-support,…). We will see. The change in the policy did Synology cost over 2000 bucks of my money.
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      21. First time NAS customer here. Was interested in Synology due to their software, but their drive policy scared me off. Went with QNAP instead, got better hardware for the money and don´t regret it. QTS works fantastic for me although there is a lot to learn.
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      22. Sounds like a very much watch this space. I have a DS1821+ but wish I’d got a 1522+ or 1621+ as I don’t need the number of spindles in hindsight. Coupute wise is handled my Dell Optiplex Micro systems for Proxmox and Plex.
        I was starting to look at downsizing etc. The DS224+ at my parents with big enough capacity is fine as a replica too.
        I’ve done the TrueNas thing, great solution and I’d go that route if all i wanted was SMB/iSCSI/NFS. The tick for me is the backup apps from Synology.
        Interesting Seagate Vs WD.

        Ultimately I prob wish I’d stayed with QNAP and saved a stack of £££
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      23. I want to update my DS920+ to something with 2.5Gb LAN. My new device won’t be from Synology. I hate anti consumer behaviour. I could forgive the lesser hardware than the competitors but what they are doing recently is just too much. I don’t care about their software anymore as I’m running all I need in Docker. So long Synology
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      24. Lol give it up Synology… Ya days are over due to greed but don’t worry most companies end up like this. Care about your customers and not ya pocket.
        I”ve purchased many NAS’s from you and also recommended Synology but NO MORE. Who ever the bird brain is or should I say bean counter that ticked the approval for your silly HDD decision should be booted out of the company. BTW the presenter on stage is a ex Car Salesman

        R.I.P Synology
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      25. Synology has lost a lot of respect and fans over this …..they implemented it for pure greed but they are likely to lose market share , no one is going to trust they won’t reimplement Synology only drives again in the future as they have tried it at least twice so most sensible people will think when will they try it a third time.
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      26. *Update* Since this was published, I have been contacted by Synology who wish to provide more clarification on the contents of this video: “Synology wish to highlight that they have heard your feedback on the Synology 2025 DiskStation Plus Series and are actively evaluating ways to accelerate the third-party drive validation program announced in April. We’ll soon keep everyone updated and share details once they’re confirmed.”
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      27. I have several Synology nas and I was going to wait and buy DS625 slim. However I end up bought Asustor Flashtor 6 instead. Consider It is getting harder to get 2.5 Sata SSD (even harder to find 2.5in HDD.) specially with Crucial discontinue their mx500 series. I might as well go with NVME storage at this point. (not to mention how expensive Synology sell their 2.5 sata ssd.) So far I like my Asustor flashtor, the only thing i miss is hyper backup which allow me backup or restore entire NAS. I know there is Asustor back up central, however I can’t seem find restore function in it.
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      28. I was waiting to get a Synology NAS and was waiting on buying for the expected refresh to the 25+ series. Then those 25+ series systems launched with anemic upgrades (and some models downgrades) and I hesitated. . . .Synology has a nice suite of software bundled with their NAS boxes that could still justify a box even with the lackluster CPU and networking options.

        Then the mandatory Synology only HDDs sealed the deal. I’m sticking with DIY Truenas boxes and am eagerly keeping my eye on Unifi NAS features. Business wise I’ll consider Unifi NAS and/or 45Drives. Synology, you could have had a customer, and you lost me with this very poor decision making.
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      29. I’m in a holding pattern. DS923+ but I’m letting Unifi NAS solution mature. (I don’t need a rack mount.)

        I’m about to overhaul my LAN with Unifi anyway so adding their NAS solution seems like a good path.

        Synology, I had high hopes from a longevity standpoint because my research pre-purchase bore that out. But this truly bizarre shift with the 2025 models has left a really bad taste. Trust is nearly gone.

        That said, Synology can pull it back from the brink by admitting they F’d up, reversing course, and apologizing. But they won’t.
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      30. Synology are showing their greedy goblin liar tactics. It’s all about the money and they are sticking to their guns on this deception that many of us see right through. A company that was first out of the gate, kept the lead for a long time has now fallen flat on it’s deceitful face. We don’t need you to regulate what we put in our systems so just provide the system then mind your own business. We will take it from that point and decide for ourselves what we put in our systems. If the hard drive companies produce rubbish, we will know and avoid them as we have done in the past. This will hurt their reputation and bottom line. In turn, this will force them to do better. All you are now Synology is a dictatorship and you expect us to bend the knee but your shareholders will bend you over before any of us will bend the knee – I assure you of that.
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      31. How can they be so slow on Seagate and WD drives when just the previous model had a full list of seagate and WD drives. Ok the new models have had minor hardware changes, so it’s just a software/ firmware issue.
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      32. When these discussions were first held the commentary was that Synology didn’t care about the smaller home and business users because they were concentrating on their big customers who would continue to buy Synology and represented most of their sales volumes. Let’s see what Synology’s bottom line is in a couple of years after users jump the Synology ship and see if those comments were correct. I somehow doubt it. I just bought my last Synology NAS and that was only because it was on special and I can still use whatever drive I wanted to.
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      33. I am both a personal user and an enterprise customer with many many units in the field to support.

        On a personal level with + and XS+ models this is annoying and frustrating, not to mention more expensive.

        On the enterprise level – I have no issue going with Synology drives as long as they back it up with premium service and support if a failure occurs. I have had some Syno drives fail in the field and they were promptly RMA’d. However, you do need to provide a CC number they can charge if you do not return the drive. That’s not stellar either, but whatever.
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      34. Synology is losing it’s customers with drive DRM. QNAP is losing it’s customers with loose security. The winners here for the SOHO and advanced hobbyist market are the custom NAS platforms (Aoostar, Minisforum, etc) and TruNAS software stack. I’ll be joining them
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      35. I have an ancient QNAP that I would really like to replace with a 925+. I have zero comfort doing this with this foolishness going on. I can’t be alone with this caution and it has to be hurting sales.
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      36. The bridge is burned to the ground. Zero trust on what they’d pull next even if they didn’t have a hard drive restriction. If you’re serious about wanting a NAS and the umph to run things like Plex Media Server, It’s time to just build out real NAS hardware with real CPUs and memory (Aoostar WTR Max looking mighty fine). Sure, a polished (expensive for what it is) appliance is simple, but there are just too many other options. Way to crap the bed, Synology.
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      37. My DS 1515+ died (after about a decade of use) just a couple of months ago and before all this I would’ve bought a new one. I chose to spend a lot of time building a replacement myself because I will never give them another cent. All of their excuses are BS. They could easily put a checkbox in the interface that allows you to override the compatibility check. This would be perfect for home labers and home users that aren’t ever going to avail themselves of their support anyway.

        This is a money grab, pure and simple.
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      38. I still cannot fathom why they would do this, given how competition is getting fiece with a lot of newcomers into the NAS space, last thing you want to do is something that pushes customers away from your products and this was as blunt as it gets.
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      39. had a DS214 play, I waited and waited and waited for the hardware to be right and when my interest started to increase they then started with all this hard drive incompatibility so I couldnt transfer across the 2 WD Reds over. I completely gave up and bought another solution. 10 years of waiting lol, its over now
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      40. Who had approved this bloody decision ??
        It was a so dramatic change with a so huge negative impact on the brand image !
        This decision was so unacceptable from the customer viewpoint, that Synology obviously knew that: who had authorized this decision ?

        I doubt that the CEO was the only one, but he was surely part of the committee that had decided this bloody approach , “justified” by more reliability…
        So Synology must understand something that they still do not understand (or do not want to understand): the impact on the brand image is so catastrophic, that you must :
        1/ fire all the person(s)that had approved this dramatic decision, even if you have to replaced all the executive committee !
        2/ You must apologize towards your customers and commit to never do the same.

        I am sure that you will not, and even if you do, an important part of the customers will never trust you again.

        I have been a Synology customer for years (if not decades), but my upcoming new NAS will not be a Synology.

        I am really sad to leave Synology, but even if you remove the red light in DSM 7.3, how can I be sure that you will not reactivate it in DSM 7.x or DSM-8 ???

        By the way, this video talks about HDD, but what about NVMe and RAM ??
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      41. It would be quite funny if Seagate/WD/Toshiba started specifying that their drives are not compatable with Synology. I have a small synology NAS, the next one will be an open software ! No more of the crap.
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      42. I have an idea, why don’t we piss away our reputation and introduce a policy that will make our already premium product stupid expensive?
        – Synology

        Thank you for leaving the market for private nas customers!
        – everyone else with a NAS product
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      43. Synology should get a Darwin award. They pulled a broadcom and killed off a bunch of their customer base and now they’re trying to backtrack. Dummies!
        I’m betting that Qnap and Ugreen and Asustor & Tetramaster gained a lot of traction at the expense of Synology. Good for us!
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      44. I’m currently upgrading my “offsite backup” 2-bay NAS – got a UGREEN DXP2800, immediately put TrueNAS on it, and so far I love it. The fact I can choose my own OS, whatever HDDs and SSDs I want, actually good specs – I’m definitely moving away from Synology, after well over 10 years.

        Next year I’ll replace my 8-bay and I’m already excited for getting something that’s around the same price as a Synology. Not sure if UGREEN or something else, depending on what’s out, but the possibilities look very promising!
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      45. This is not the plan they had all along, this is them backpedaling, or plan B at best. And for that alone, Synology is and will stay off our list of products to recommend and sell.
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      46. Synology cite support as a key factor in the use of their HDD’s. I’ve noticed over the past few months when I’ve submitted a couple of support tickets, how their first response has been AI generated. In other words, no human has been involved in the initial diagnosis/advice relating to the issue.

        If Synology’s aim by introducing their own HDD’s was to reduce support interaction, then they’ve already achieved this by providing AI generated help that could, in many cases, provide the necessary assistance.

        So, we come back to how will Synology branded HDD’s reduce support issues. As long as you’re using a NAS certified drive, I can see no reason to assume that ones branded by Synology will be any more reliable than the OEM drives their based on. The only differentiator here is the firmware. Synology cannot modify the hardware of the drives they have rebranded, so essentially software is the thing that verifies their drives in their eyes.

        Fine, if that’s really the case, then apply that firmware patch to OEM drives to achieve this certification.

        By using software via onboard firmware to identify their drives, they have control, and it’s control that they’ve wanted, not verification.
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      47. If they want to look less ridiculous they need to start with Toshiba – the stuff they rebadge themselves. The next thing is what upsets me most – that they don’t support when you use far suprerior hardware to what they offer – at the end, they just need to publish their test requirements on top of providing the processes for vendors to submit it to them.
        Personally no sympathy for people who don’t want to update from DSM 7.2 to DSM 7.3 – these are the kind of people where I need to go and fix their NAS or handle those updates for them because they are still on 6.x and suddenly it’s a huge risk – where it would have been much easier if they had just done it before – and we could have done something that actually helps them in the time I’m there for support. you can get your L3 consultant to do an update everyone is afraid of, or you can get them to fine tune your alerts or your CMS. the latter things add value, the first is just putting out the fire.
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      48. I have repeatedly told our local Synology rep that you can bring enterprise practices to the prosumer market. However, it is not wise to take away existing feature set. If they outright introduce the program as something like added warranty for users using Synology branded hdd , it would have been a completely different story altogether
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      49. Apple has locked people into their ecosystem and not allowed upgrades for years. While I don’t agree with it, Apple gives excellent support. Maybe Synology is taking a similar approach but users should have a choice. If you don’t use their drives, hey—Synology isn’t responsible. Put the onus on the end user if they don’t choose what is recommended. Look at Windows—it runs on thousands of different hardware configurations and look at the issues they have had over the years.
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      50. I’d like to know whose head the hdd locking came out of in the first place, and whether that person keeps his/her job by the end of this debacle. Also, am I the only one finding Synology’s spinning very sleezy?
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      51. Unpopular opinion: Before Synology locks the drives, I still plan to buy Synology drives.

        Why? Because searching for the compatible models on Amazon and other stores is a mess—stores list one model number and ship another, or they mix variations together. There are just so many model numbers.

        Now I know which ones I can purchase!! If a Synology drive costs the same as a competing brand, what’s the problem? Yes, enterprise‑grade models are far more expensive, but I’m talking about the regular “Red” consumer line versus Synology’s “Green”.
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      52. Synology – fantastic nas, but no one is buying it due to some clown approving the hard disk idea. See if they still think it’s a good idea when they are doing 2 day weeks and calling in creditors.
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      53. Too little, too late.
        They’d need to seriously improve their hw and sw offerings, reduce prices, and keep it like that for a few years before I even consider their stuff.
        Oh, I forgot – they absolutely need to own up and say sorry really hard.
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      54. It comes down to offering options, if synology’s hard drives were SO MUCH better then people would opt for them. There is not a difference so the lack of options has cratered their reputation and i will NEVER use another device by them EVER.
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      55. Well, at least for me, it’s too late. I was in the market for upgrading my old Synology 2-bay NAS last year .. but after hearing these decisions made by Synology this year .. I learned Unraid and went with it and put Synology on my blacklist. The thing is, people ask me for what-to-buy tech equipment wise and been asked what is a good NAS — now I tell them .. just don’t go with Synology.
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      56. Synology has been trying to get into the enterprise market for years and what helped was the name they made for themselves in the home market where IT professionals simply could not buy (or recommend) a big brand like EMC, NetApp or HPE.

        The freedom to replace a failing drive with any other brand available for sale or just collecting dust in a drawer after it’s first life in a desktop machine was an incredibly comforting factor for those who know it’s not about if your hard drive fails, but when it fails.

        So my only recommendation to Synology is to learn from the Japanese. If you make a mistake, you fix it, apologise and beg for forgiveness.

        We don’t need to know the details or stories about hard drive manufacturers. If they don’t want to do the verification or don’t have the manpower to do this, then it’s not a good idea to make this the problem of your customers. And if Synology changed something in the hardware or software that suddenly makes existing drives a risk, change it back to what worked.

        I will soon be replacing my Synology because it is running out of space. It’s up to synology if they want to keep me as a customer.

        If not, good luck pitching those PAS7700’s to me and the other people you alienated this year.
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      57. If they admitted that they F’d up, that would be a step in the right direction. To allow drives as they have previously done, would be great. How ever, playing with games with words, just lets the ship continue to sinking.
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      58. I was in the market for a NAS, Wanted the 8 bay so bad, but ended up purchasing the UGREEN DXP8800 instead and am more than pleased. Synology shot themselves in the foot. a little too late.. they would of earned my business, but nooo.. biggest tech fail of 2025 so far was this decision.
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      59. When they do include all the drives they’ve always allowed but now don’t Synology then need to upgrade their hardware to the 21st Century. Old non GPU, CPUs, tiny memory as standard. Let alone the high prices they currently charge for their outdated technology. But its clear they dont want home users and are under some deluded belief that commercial enterprises are their market

        In any case like many others. I’ve moved on. In my case to a self build and Unraid. What a revelation. Never going back
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      60. It reminds me of the “right to repair” issues with John Deere. Imagine buying a car, truck or tractor and being forced to only use their parts, their oil, their wiper fluid, their support, their tires, their air in the those tires, etc. That is the new Synology in a nutshell. Beyond that, most people have many $1000’s in per-exisitng stuff – hard drives and whatnot – and they want to be able to move that stuff forward with upgrades.
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      61. Sorry, Synology. The reputational damage is done, for me anyway. I’ve already invested in a new NAS hardware direction and so far, I’m glad I did, it’s been a great experience so far. At least as good and probably better than my experience ever was with Synology to begin with.
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      62. Already switched to a home built Unraid system. It was a fun learning experience. I still have my Synology DS and could use it as a backup option, but I want to know how they are going to handle EXISTING systems. My fear was they were going to literally brick my existing system because I didn’t use Synology drives in it. Which frankly seems like it would be a legal issue but I just wasn’t willing to take the chance.
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      63. This has nothing to do with “certification”. It’s synology wanted to sell more of their own drivers. They’re greedy nothing more. I switched to ugreen and never looked back. Much more powerful hardware.
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      64. Maybe I was lucky but I got two different Synology units working with unsupported disks, but with this I’d be careful about updating the hardware.
        The hard disk market evolves quite fast so if you can only use approved drives then you’ll be running uphill all the time because it will be a delay in coming up with approvals.
        I don’t mind if a manufacturer has a list of drives they know are good, that’s fine. If they also have a list of drives that they have discovered problems with then that’s fine too. If you are in the grey zone of untested then it’s your problem and in most cases it will work fine.
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      65. Will they do it for nvme drives as well? Recently I bought a DS923+ but ended up returning it cuz I couldn’t have an nvme storage pool on it. Synology nvme drives are crazy expensive and not available in the market.
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      66. I have no problem with Synology requiring we use their drives as long as their drives are widely available, cost the same as other drives, and last as long. Unfortunately, their drives cost substantially more and hard to find. Synology really shoots itself in the foot for this misguided scheme.
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      67. Probably, their 2025 models are selling very bad, and now they are in a hurry to correct the mistake. But meantime they handed over lots of potential customers to ugreen, unraid etc. Those customers will likely not come back.
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      68. I wanted to cover the 2025 NAS releases from Synology, but I don’t have any Synology-branded drives, and I’ve chosen to hold off until this issue is resolved, one way or another.
        My not covering new releases is the least of Synology’s problems, however. The issue here is trust, and how, over at least fifteen years, Synology built that up with its customer base. And then, like a temperamental child bored with an old toy, it decided to feed it into a blender. The amount of time this issue has been left to fester while Synology appears to be trying to shift blame to the drive makers has damaged their reputation and undermined customer trust. What I find most disturbing about this whole mess is that, based on what they have said on the record so far, things are going exactly as they planned them to go. That the person who came up with this idea hasn’t been fired would suggest they are at the top of this company. Whatever happens next, this has been a reputational and commercial fiasco that might never be undone.
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      69. Sy_NO_logy – prefer the option of better hardware from UGREEN. PLUS really like the TrueNAS dashboard summary view.
        AND other manufacturers are now providing SHR ???? Synology your response is too late and the hardware is not goood enough.
        What the customers expect now is a date when the issue will be fixed . . . together with a comment on YOUR future policy.
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      70. Synology needs to: fire the person(s) who pushed these changes, reverse all the changes for HDD/USB/Media Licenses (I assume all of these were “good ideas” from the same person(s)) and come out with an apology.

        But we know they are not going to do that, so Synology can verify DEEZ.
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      71. To little to late, Synology just missed a sale. My DS218+ is bursting at the seams with my media collection and is, at this very moment, being copied to my shiny new DXP8800Plus. I will use the Synology till it fails but they wont see another $ from me.
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      72. That’s pure greed and FAFO (I bought a 425+ with from 218J and always use all synology array back in the days but still hated how they do all these), now hope they open also the NVMe cache on some third party drives, hack the 1TB are dirt cheap now we can afford the cache to even wears down every half a year and still get better C/P than their own SSD
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      73. Lets face it all drives should work in all systems, some are better than others long term but this is clearly money related and they are getting hit in the pocket so they will cave in.
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      74. Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of their actions.

        Personally, I’m not willing to go back unless and until they issue a public statement/apology officially walking back their hard drive policy AND sacking the dumbass who thought this was a good idea. We need to send a clear message to not try this again.
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      75. I’m begging you! What is the verification process? This is all fiction. They want to say that the products of the only remaining manufacturers from the enterprise and business segment may not meet the requirements of their majesty Synology in some way.
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      76. the trust is goon with synology program with lock-down-disk-to-get-more-money and i have tried using the synology support an number of times and that has every time been vast of time and not resolve the issue.
        because of this i have this year got around 6-7 NAS that was planned to be Synology but has istedt got some Truenas and other NAS brands.
        So even that they roll back and allow disks again, the trust is lost…. now they have shown that they like to vendor lockin users
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      77. I don’t think they are winning back the DIY customers until they remove the block for unverified drives. I have no problem with maintaining a verified drives list and offer increased (or even any) support for pools built with drives on the list, and certainly business customers would like that peace of mind, but if I want to roll the dice on unverified drives that should be my choice.
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      78. No longer interested. Moved on already. They are too hard to deal with and have caused too many problems. Synology are no longer competitive anyway as many vendors have come along to fill the space.
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      79. I can’t imagine anyone buying a Synology system. Warning people is one thing, but banning the use of a drive is another. If you purchase a system, it is your property, not theirs.
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      80. Too little, too late. They can never be trusted ever again imo. There is no guarantee they won’t do this again and who knows how long new drives will take to be added. Also, I can see them do other stupid things, like putting a paywall on the software, doing the same thing with memory or USB/Ethernet sticks or who knows what other anti-consumer bs they come up with. They are liars as well, their explanation does not make any sense and they are just gaslighting their customers. There are plenty of other solutions and honestly, I should have gone the build your own route a while ago anway (which I somewhat did with the Aoostar WTR Max and it has been great). There won’t enter any of their newer stuff in my house ever again, they are not to be trusted for consumer use. As I have said before, this kind of action makes sense in a business environment with support contracts and whatnot, not in a consumer environment, which means they imo are not be used for consumer use unless you don’t care about your data (eg. pure backups of something else).

        I honestly don’t understand why those drive manufacturers don’t just stop giving their drives to Synology and tell them they are on their own, but I guess that’s why I am not working in a large company like this. If Synology wants only their drives verified, they should at least create them themselves. I guess there is still a running contract, but I know I would not renew that sucker for whatever reason unless they turn back what is basically discrimination on which drives are in their systems. If you don’t want to adhere to standards, create your own standard, Synology. If you want to support SATA drives (which are a standard for a very long time), you can’t just support only a couple of them. Go full proprietary or don’t do it at all.
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      81. Was disappointed with Synology decision. That being said it was extremely easy to bypass using the fix on this channel and their software is still the best. So I will continue to use them.
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      82. Seriously, how much verification is really required for drives that are either identical except for branding or for major manufactures like WD and Toshiba? What possible justification is there to make it so damn hard to use non-Synology drives?

        Beyond the obvious self serving justification to pad Synology’s margins of course.
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      83. I still have no idea why Synology seems to think verification is required? NAS-rated drives are designed to handle things like vibration, errors, etc. properly already. I’ve had NAS drives in QNAP running 24×7 for years with WD drives with no issues whatsoever. I’ve only ever had issues with Seagate (every Seagate drive I’ve ever had has failed for one reason or another, always irrepairably).
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      84. They thought theirs software could justify all shorts of scams and proprietary crap, Ugreen software is not that behind and the hardware differences is just huge, yeah this is starting to look one of those study cases in how bring a company down.
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      85. Here’s the thing. How has it taken HDD manufacturers this long to verify a drive that Synology slaps a sticker on and installs its firmware on? Think about it; Synology branded drives are Seagate or Toshiba drives. How were Synology able to verify these drives so quickly while the vastly larger resources of Seagate, Toshiba and WD have yet to do so? Remember, Synology offloaded verification to the OEM drive manufacturers, suggesting they were able to verify their branded drives rapidly. If they could do so that quickly, why not simply repeat the verification process on OEM drives?

        Makes zero sense to me.
        Oh, I listened to Synology’s addressing of this, and it’s still BS. What does “fully validated” mean? Does that mean that for years Synology’s verified drive list wasn’t “fully validated” and thus subject to the issues they waffle on about now? Throw in corporate-speak terms like “strategic” or “end to end,” or other such word salads to fool the users. It’s sophistry, nothing more.
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      86. I use AI, but for the most part, I find it is not advanced enough to do what I ask of it, and I don’t ask it for the type of functions covered in this video. I don’t need it for office apps. I can write my own material. I have been making complex spreadsheets for decades. I want an AI that can do much more complex tasks. Other than surveillance, I don’t know what I would want an AI for in a NAS. The AI in their cameras has been useful in people and vehicle detection and alerting. I’d like to see a more advanced and robust DVA model come out, but they seem to have either abandoned the DVA line, or put it on the back burner.

        I’m not for or against AI. It’s just a tool. A misnamed one at that. As with any tool, what I primarily care about is what it can do for me. At this point, not much that matters is the answer. Once it does something that I care about, I’ll worry about how it does it, what the implications are, and so forth. Until then, it’s just a product I don’t need.
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      87. Ok… 1 minute in and I just don’t give a shit about AI. Honestly, fuck AI. I don’t want it. I’ll give ya a like even though I’m not going to watch it. I’m sure it’s good content for those that care. ????
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      88. Why not let the NAS do what it’s names says -> Network attached storage…! Synology…..Yearh – I don’t care what they do, my door is closed in that direction… skipping this video, sorry ????
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      89. Synology is so passe. Remember back when they alienated all their customers with ridiculously high-priced and under-sized drives as required purchases? Whew. Glad those days are gone and behind us. TrueNAS is where it’s at, now. 72TB of wonderfully stable and easily managed storage space for practically the price of the drives. Never lookin’ back.
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      90. The app based AI is a waste of time. If I am in a particular app I will use Any of the numerous AI options. What we need is NAS specific AI to allow me to search, catalog, discover and create based on my locally stored unstructured data. i.e. create a presentation based on all the information I have that will show how to “pick subject” and format it as a PowerPoint deck.
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      91. Does anyone know if it is possible to use Synology AI Console with a local AI?
        Connecting your personal information to cloud-based AI is one of the biggest mistakes people can make. Only private AI that you run locally is truly secure
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      92. Soo … heres the thing.
        A company who has openly broken trust with their customer base and hijacked that same customer bases ability to continue with Synology’s products by way of hardware upgrades, because of a proprietary HDD program … is now telling us they will not scrape our NAS data, for them to sell to the highest AI scraping bidder.

        Sure … today they wont, but agree to it now, and then one day when they can claim plausible deniability, they will hop on a future revolving door of truth, and we will become a whole new level of being a product for sale.

        No, I dont believe them … and I dont buy it.
        THATS what the proprietary HDD fiasco has done.
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      93. Not only do I lack care, I actively HATE “””AI”””, and I would rather sell my cherished 920+ and build my own NAS than let /any/ fucking company put “””AI””” on my hardware. Can’t wait for this bullshit bubble to pop.
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      94. I may have missed something here, but as it’s likely users will be editing documents via a web browser connected to their NAS, why wouldn’t you use third-party AI integration tools that plug right into your browser and don’t directly mess with your NAS?
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      95. So this is where Synology spent their time and money.. on something most of us are not interested in. Money that would have been of better use upgrading the ancient hardware.
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      96. The one reason I really want to switch to UGREEN is that their Photos app can recognize text in images and make it searchable. That’s the only reason I keep all my photos on my iPhone instead of putting them in Synology Photos, so I can search for the random word I remember there being in a screenshot I took two years ago. Synology Photos should really be able to do text recognition!
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      97. Do I have to buy GENUINE SYNOLOGY BRANDED AI CAPABLE HARD DRIVES to use SYNOLOGY AI? Or are we just giving them more ideas?

        I watched the video, but Synology stopped being an option for me, even at entry level extra backups, and saying “look here’s AI!” isn’t going to change that.
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      98. ‼ *We much prefer to choose business partners who value their customers.*
        ???? *That’s why Synology always comes last for us. And that’s great—we haven’t regretted it for a second!* ????
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      99. AI … no, thanks.

        It’s bad enough when apps introduce local AI assistance, but when you connect outside your NAS to perform AI based tasks, then that’s an even bigger no-no.

        Synology has, alas, jumped on the AI marketing bandwagon in an effort to promote its products. However, what they’re doing is like running for more sales with a ball and chain around one ankle in the form of their HDD lock-in. If Synology believe that offering AI fluff will offset their lock-in policy, they’re mistaken.
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      100. Running AI locally requires higher spec hardware in order to run smoothly while performing the other everyday tasks. Its been fine having the ‘best software’ till now that is able to run on low end components. implementing AI this way is just another silly move that will push its remaining customers away. Synology continue to amaze everyone with their decision making skills
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      101. AI as it runs off of LLM depends upon things that are L_arge. Unfortunately this dependency isn’t storage but instead is RAM and processor dependent neither of which are typical strengths of many NAS boxes which have grown from roots of Atom processors and the like. As such there will be a requirement to use AI-services. However excluding those running a Synology office (or mail), is there truly a NEED for AI on a NAS or is it a would be nice to have as it’s fashionable?
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      102. Don’t care. Synology is done. It’s just another step towards all cloud-based back-up they want achieve. That’s not where you need a NAS for. Goodluck whith that, Goodbye.
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      103. I was mostly very sceptical about letting an outside program have access to my NAS. My knowledge is to limited to be able to see what it might do with my private files so I thought it was safer to not activate that. Would love to see someone who have the knowledge to look at it and tell what they can do.
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      104. What is the point of using a nas drive as a pc? And not even that – a broker – I think I maybe missing the point of a network storage array?

        However, as always thank you and have a super holiday. You deserve it.
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      105. Hehe, I was curious as to how Synology would run a local AI / LLM on their hardware, that was my assumption going in. It’s an interesting video nonetheless. I think my main concern is about sending data remotely, and perhaps not seeing the full impact of token use until after the fact. Perhaps Synology would be better off working on a dedicated local AI box if they wanted to go that route, if they wanted to isolate the NAS from security issues and also not wanting to re-design the hardware for their NAS offerings.
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      106. Synology could invent a magical technological method for delivering remote sexual climax from their NAS devices, and it’s still not invest my money into them. They burned the bridge — failing to implemented Ethernetbeyond 1Gbps until 2025, 10 years too late ; discontinuing media codec features ; overly basic network, ridiculously simplified networking controls on their web portals… And finally the requirement for only Synology overpriced drives. Nope, never again. Synology lost my money forever, and they will not succeed in the enterprise world, because they broke trust in the geek community.
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      107. Thanks for doing a thorough review. It’s nice to see Synology making an effort in this area and being fairly cautious. I’ll wait for a later version in a few years to try it out, but I expect to have a local solution in place by then. ????
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      108. @4:20, rather than a local AI it is cloud based… I’m sorry, NO-no-no. Just to support this great creator I put this video on silent and put it in the background for a full view..
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      109. Most Users just want decent gigabit speeds, powerful processors and the ability to use whatever hard drives or NVme drives they want. Who wants this Ai crap messing with your NAS ? What a huge security risk for any business.
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