Synology Locks Down Plus Series NAS to Proprietary Hard Drives

Synology's new Plus Series NAS systems, aimed at SMBs and advanced home users, now require the use of Synology-branded hard drives to access the full feature set. While non-Synology drives can be used for storage, crucial features like drive health monitoring, deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automatic firmware updates are disabled. This move, justified by Synology as improving performance and reliability and mitigating risks like recent Seagate fraudulent HDD issues, forces users to buy directly from Synology or certified suppliers. This limits choice and potentially increases costs for smaller businesses. A workaround exists by migrating drives from older systems, but this isn't practical for most users.