A few months ago, the Synology user base was taken aback when the company announced that it would implement a branded drive-only policy in many of its units. Synology-branded drives are more expensive than those of most other brands, and Synology does not manufacture some of the larger 26-28TB drives available on the market. This limitation forces users to purchase more units and, consequently, more drives in smaller capacities when building a storage array.
For some time, Synology had adhered to its decision, citing that it only wanted third-party vendors to undergo a required certification process, which wasn’t happening. Instead, Synology was finding its users bashing the plan at every turn and quickly migrating to less restrictive brands. Today, with the release of Synology DSM 7.3, the hard drive limitation has been lifted.
As data grows rapidly, advanced solutions are needed to manage, process, and unlock its full value,” said Kenneth Hsu, Director of the System Group at Synology. “DSM 7.3 helps customers confidently address evolving data management challenges on a platform that is secure, reliable, and ready to support AI transformation.”
According to the announcement, Synology is committed to delivering both a secure and high-performance system with rigorous validation of third-party hardware and software. The 2025 version of the Diskstation Plus, Value, and J series will support installation and validation of storage pools on third-party drives. DSM 7.3 is available for download by navigating to ‘Updates’ in your DSM dashboard.
