Compatibility / Synology / DS925+

Compatible Hard Drives for the Synology DS925+

Synology's list read 2026-08-20. Prices last refreshed 2026-10-08.

About the DS925+ - full specs, the honest total build cost at three tiers, and the M.2 cache-vs-pool reality for this exact model.

Drives that work in the DS925+, cheapest per terabyte

These are internal SATA hard drives in stock now. They are not on Synology's list for the DS925+ - nothing third-party is - and on this machine that does not stop them working. Each row says so explicitly rather than leaving the cell blank.

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Every third-party drive runs Unverified here

This is the part worth understanding before you buy, because it looks alarming and is not. On a 2025 Plus machine DSM checks each drive against Synology's list, and because that list contains only Synology drives, anything else is marked Unverified. Not some third-party drives. All of them, by construction.

What the label means, in Synology's words: the drive “has not been verified as compatible with your Synology storage system”, and “Synology Technical Support may only provide limited assistance.” What it does not cost you is the pool. On a 2025 DS Plus an unlisted hard drive or 2.5-inch SATA SSD is supported for a new installation and a new storage pool.

Synology's rule for 2025-and-later machines is drawn per series and per drive type. On RS Plus and on the FS, HD, SA, UC, XS+, XS, DP and DVA/NVR lines an unlisted hard drive is supported for migration only. The DS925+ is a DS Plus: unlisted hard drives and 2.5-inch SATA SSDs can create a pool, and an unlisted M.2 NVMe SSD is supported for migration only. Source: Synology, DSM 7.3, last updated 27 May 2026. See the drive policy page for the rule per series, quoted and dated.

What avoiding the flag costs

If you would rather have no Unverified label anywhere in DSM, the price of that is measurable. At 16TB on SATA, Synology's own drive is $62.50 per terabyte against $42.38 for the cheapest qualifying alternative - +47.5%, computed from live listings and matched interface to interface.

On a DS925+ that premium is paid once per bay and again at every replacement. Whether a clean status page is worth it is a real question with a defensible answer either way - what it should not be is a surprise discovered after the machine arrives.

What “not on the list” means on this machine

It is worth being precise here, because the same phrase means two completely different things on two different Synology machines.

On an RS Plus machine, or one from the FS, HD, SA, UC, XS+, XS, DP and DVA/NVR lines, launched in 2025 or later, an unlisted hard drive is supported for migration from an existing Synology only - not for a new storage pool. And because Synology's list held no third-party hard drive when we read it, the practical effect on those machines is that only Synology-branded hard drives can build a new pool. Source: Synology, DSM 7.3, last updated 27 May 2026.

The DS925+ is not in that group, despite being a 2025 machine - the rule is drawn by series, not only by year. Its list is Synology-only, but on a DS Plus an unlisted hard drive is supported for a new pool. A drive from the table above will initialise, build a pool and run, carrying the Unverified status described above.

Every 2025 DiskStation on Synology's own product list, read 20 August 2026, carries the Plus suffix - so on every 2025 DiskStation an unlisted hard drive can build a pool. The machines on which only Synology hard drives can build a new pool are the 2025-and-later rackmount and enterprise lines, not this one. The drive policy page carries the rule as Synology states it, per series, with dates.

The DS925+ list was read with Synology's own model filter, www.synology.com, read 19 August 2026. We record what the list said on that date; we do not re-read it when you load this page.

What the DS925+'s list size tells you

The DS925+ is the four-bay machine most of the 2025 coverage was written about, and the one where the reversal story matters most. Synology lists 22 hard drives for it and every one is its own, but the Plus tier is precisely the bucket where an unlisted drive still builds a pool. The list is short; the door is open.

Across the ten Synology machines we measured, the counts run from 4 to 47. If a compatibility list described what a machine could physically accept, that range would make no sense - the hardware differences between these units are nothing like that dramatic. What the range actually tracks is how recently each machine sat in Synology's current line-up, which is a fact about testing budgets rather than about engineering.

Synology's own drives for the DS925+

These are the drives that carry the strongest claim available on this page: Synology lists them, so they are vendor-listed rather than merely fitting. If you want the machine and the media supported by one company, this is what that looks like at today's prices.

What the brand costs, measured

At 16TB on SATA, Synology's own drive is $62.50 per terabyte against $42.38 for the cheapest qualifying alternative - a premium of +47.5%, computed from live listings and matched interface to interface.

The matching is not a technicality. Compared against a SATA peer instead of a SAS one, Synology's 12TB SAS drive reads at a premium near 97% - but that number measures the gap between SAS and SATA, not the gap between Synology and everyone else. Any percentage on this site that describes a difference is matched like for like, and an external USB drive is never used as the comparison for an internal one.

Choosing between them

There is a defensible case for either column, and the honest version of it is short.

Synology's drives buy you validation and a single support relationship. When a drive misbehaves in a Synology chassis with Synology media, nobody can point at anybody else, and DSM surfaces firmware and health data for its own drives that it does not always get from third-party models. For a business machine that has to be somebody's responsibility, that is worth real money.

Third-party NAS drives buy you choice and a lower price per terabyte, and on the DS925+ they cost you nothing in function. The drives in the first table are the same models that have run in NAS units for years. What you are giving up is a line in a vendor's spreadsheet.

As a reference point, the cheapest terabyte on this page today is the WD Ultrastar 12TB SATA HUH721212ALE601 at $28.33 per terabyte, $339.99 for 12TB. Whether that is the right drive for your machine depends on how hard you intend to work it - a drive can be the cheapest per terabyte and still be wrong for an array that never spins down. Our CMR or SMR resolver is the first check worth running on any candidate.

What this page does not tell you

Two things, deliberately. We do not state a bay count or a maximum capacity for the DS925+, because we have not sourced either from Synology. Both circulate widely and both are frequently wrong or out of date, and a wrong ceiling either costs you a drive you could have used or sells you one that will not work.

We also do not tell you when the DS925+ launched. The 2025 boundary is the thing that decides whether the restriction applies, so a launch year is load-bearing here, and we would rather point you at Synology's own page for that machine than assert a date from memory. What this page does hold is what Synology's list said on a specific day, and the date is printed beside it.

Other Synology machines

The counts differ more than you might expect - from 4 drives on one machine to 47 on another - which is itself the clearest evidence that Synology maintains these lists per model rather than publishing one list for everything. See the compatibility hub for how the other manufacturers handle the same question.