Synology's Drive List Has Zero Third-Party Hard Drives

The finding

Synology publishes a drive compatibility list. We read it on 19 August 2026, and every hard drive on it is a Synology hard drive - the HAT5300, HAT5310 and HAT5320 SATA families and the HAS5300, HAS5310 and HAS5320 SAS families.

That is not because the list excludes other manufacturers. It carries 100 third-party entries. Every single one of them is an enterprise 2.5-inch SSD: 88 SATA and 12 SAS, from Samsung (36), Micron (33), Intel (20), Kingston (8), and one each from ADATA, Apacer and MemoRight. All enterprise class.

Third-party 3.5-inch hard drives on the list: zero.

Why that matters more than it sounds

On its own it would be a curiosity. Read against Synology's own drive compatibility policy for 2025-and-later models, it decides what you can build.

Synology's per-series table governs what happens with a drive that is NOT on the list. On the **Value and J series**, an unlisted HDD is not supported for creating a storage pool, for cache, or even for migration from another Synology. On the **RS Plus and the enterprise lines**, migration only. On the **DS Plus and desktop FS models**, an unlisted HDD can create a new storage pool - that is the flexibility DSM 7.3 introduced.

Now combine the two. If no third-party HDD is on the list, then on a 2025-or-later Value or J-series machine, only Synology-branded hard drives can create a storage pool. Not "third-party drives are discouraged" - they are the drives the table says cannot do it.

On a DS Plus the news is better and still worth stating precisely: third-party HDDs work, but every one of them is unlisted **by construction**. The Unverified flag in Storage Manager and the reduced support scope are not an edge case you might avoid by choosing carefully. They are the normal state of any hard drive Synology does not manufacture.

What the DSM 7.3 story missed

The widely-reported version of this is that DSM 7.3 walked back the 2025 restrictions and third-party drive support returned to the Plus, Value and J series. That is true of one of those three.

Synology's own table shows the Value and J series with unlisted HDDs unsupported for new pools, cache and migration alike. The relaxation applies to the DiskStation Plus line and the desktop FS models. Both facts come from the same document.

We are not interested in scoring points about it - the announcement did emphasise the DiskStation Plus change, and the per-series table is where the exceptions live. But the buyer that summary reaches is often exactly the one it does not describe: someone with a value-tier machine, reading that the policy was reversed, choosing a cheaper third-party drive, and finding out at pool creation.

How we read it, and why automated readers cannot

Three things make this list difficult to check, and any one of them alone produces a confident wrong answer.

It is rendered entirely in JavaScript. An automated fetch of the page returns a shell containing no drives at all - not an error, just an empty document with the right title.

It is region-gated. From a non-US address Synology injects a localisation prompt, and that prompt's dropdown sits over the brand filter and swallows clicks meant for it. The filter simply will not open.

And the brand filter defaults to **Synology**. Under the default the table returns only Synology-branded drives - 41 rows on a DS925+, 47 on a DS920+, 65 across the whole category - and looks exactly like a complete list rather than a filtered one.

We read it in a real browser, from a US address, with the filter switched to third-party. We say this partly as the verification trail and partly because it explains why the fact has not travelled: nearly every automated way of checking returns either nothing or the wrong answer, with no signal that anything is missing.

What the lock costs, measured

If Synology-branded drives are the only ones that can build a pool on a Value or J-series machine, the obvious question is what that costs. We computed it from live listings on 19 August 2026, matching interface to interface - SATA against SATA, SAS against SAS - and restricting both sides to new, CMR, in-stock drives at the same capacity:

**16TB SATA** - Synology at $63.21/TB against $42.78/TB for the cheapest qualifying alternative: **+47.8%**.

**12TB SAS** - Synology at $55.83/TB against $44.54/TB: **+25.3%**.

**8TB SAS** - Synology at $40.68/TB against $32.75/TB: **+24.2%**.

The interface matching is not pedantry. Compared against a SATA peer instead, the 12TB SAS drive shows a premium near 97% - but that figure would be measuring the gap between SAS and SATA, not the gap between Synology and everyone else. Same trap as comparing a 3TB build against a 20TB one and calling the difference a discount.

On a four-bay machine at 16TB, the SATA premium is a few hundred dollars across the set. Whether that is worth paying is a real question with a defensible answer either way - vendor testing and single-vendor support have value. What it should not be is a number you discover after the machine arrives.

What to do if you are buying

**If your Synology predates 2025**, none of this applies to you. Synology states that the compatibility policies apply only to models launched from 2025 and do not apply retroactively. Buy whatever fits and meets the interface, as before.

**If you have a 2025-or-later Value or J-series machine**, check Synology's list for your exact model before buying any hard drive. On the evidence above, the answer for HDDs is going to be a Synology-branded drive. That is a real cost difference and it is worth knowing before the machine arrives rather than after.

**If you have a 2025-or-later DS Plus**, you have a genuine choice, and third-party drives will work. Expect the Unverified label and understand what Synology says it covers: for drives not on the list, support is limited to system hardware, software and configuration, and does not extend to issues caused by the drive or its firmware. For many buyers that is an acceptable trade at current price differences. It should be a decision rather than a surprise.

**Whatever the machine**, the drive still has to be right for an array: CMR rather than shingled, rated for continuous operation, and matched on interface and form factor. The live table below ranks the hard drives we track on cost per terabyte, and our compatibility rules are our own method rather than any vendor's endorsement.

We will re-check this

Synology's policy has changed twice already - it tightened for the 2025 models and then loosened for the DiskStation Plus line with DSM 7.3. The compatibility list itself changes continuously, and Synology reserves the right to update it at any time in their own words.

So this is a dated observation rather than a permanent fact. We read the list on 19 August 2026; Synology's policy article carried a last-updated stamp of 27 May 2026. We re-verify both quarterly, next by 19 November 2026, and every claim here carries the date it was read.

The full per-series breakdown, with Synology's wording quoted directly, is on our Synology drive policy page.