What Happens When You Use "Non Verified" Drives with Synology? 

lawrence.video/synology Synology FS3410 Review ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-64_VUU6i9nk.html Synology Products Compatibility List www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility ⏱ Time Stamps ⏱ 00:00 ▶ Synology Drive Compatibility 02:39 ▶ Product Compatibility List 03:40 ▶ Using a "Non Verified" Drive

After using Synology since the 710 model both privately and professionally, their change of politics sadly made me drop them for any future investments. It's a slippery slope called greed. Thank you for point this out..

100% agee that they should have a check box to "accept the 'risks'". Seeing a warning like that all the time, in my opinion, is unnecessary

The concern is they will make this a trend and expand the use of drive restrictions

There is a work around you can do by ssh into the device. It works and the drive status works normally. You just need to make an edit to a config file and reboot. You will have to do this everytime you update the DSM but it gets rid of the warning and gives you drive status back.

Recently aquired a nas for business use (first time user). Was dead set on a rack mounted one, but their drive compability list and lack of m.2 slots made me turn towards their desktop models. I'm not gonna put myself in a situation where I rely on the local stores have a select few drive models in stock, especially when the nas have SHR (synology hybrid raid) as a feature which enables me to in emergency choose another size of drive and still get back into business. In the end I ended up spending a lot less than I initially planned for, scaling down number of drives and instead buying larger drives. The software and supporting articles and services was the reason I chose synology in the first place.

I think it might be more dangerous than you think. You don't get proper health status and you have a persistent alarm. This means that if something goes wrong, you are a lot less likely to spot it since you are used to seeing warning, storage pool at risk etc etc

Thanks for the heads up!

So as someone who uses Synology both professionally and personally, my biggest issue with this is the price markup of their drives vs other standard industry drives. I can buy comparable drives from other vendors on average 30% cheaper then their custom models. While I understand what they are trying to do, their devices also dont come with the same/equal warranty as some of the 3rd party hard drives. Lastly, there is many buyers who have drive contracts with a specific vendor, and this then means that they will exclude Synology entirely, purely on this fact alone. This could be a marketing opportunity, by allowing 3rd party drives and offer the "shut up I know the risks" checkbox, but also advertise greater consistency on performance with their branded drives. Lastly, I've had to RMA one of their drives, and it took almost 6 weeks to get an RMA replacement. ALL other vendors I've dealt with is 1-2 weeks on average.

Thx 🙏, because I just install my own Synology Video Survillance at home and this it’s really useful 👍🏻 it

I was going to purchase a DS3622xs+ to replace my DS1019+ but the drive limitations stopped me. I know that few purchase the DS3622xs+ for home use, but I was one of the odd-balls who wanted to do just that. I'm still using my DS1019+ with a DX517 expansion and it's meeting my needs for now. Sadly, my next expansion will be a NAS that I build myself.

Yes it is supper annoying to add drives to the compatible list over SSH every time they update the drive list. 😃 But jokes aside, it would be cool if they verified the 4 TB model, they would allow the 8 TB model too. (for example Segate Exos drives)

If you've ever owned a desktop 2015xs, you probably pulled your hair out after updating it to 6.2.4 and found it would no longer boot, then it showed incompatible drives after a rebuild. We RMAd it, and the new one did the same thing. We had two of them, one still running 6.1.x with the same drives. Checked the "updated" compatibility list, and found drives for it, except the drive firmware was wrong, and they showed up as incompatible. It wouldn't even let me install the DSM pat file. This unit is very similar to the 1815+. We had to replace the unit with something else that supported 10GbE, so we got a couple of smaller RS1618's and used the same drives as before. No errors, compatibility issues, nothing. At that point, any newer Synology NASs we've ordered either with Synology drives, or with high end (like WD Gold) drives on the list. I like Synology, but they messed up on the 2015xs bad, made two of my units useless, and didn't take responsibility and fix their firmware until long after the problem. I sat on them for two years before tossing them out when the latest DSM wouldn't install even on a pair of Samsung 860 pros (on the Compatibility list!) They sent me another RMA unit, and still nothing worked. So, if you buy one that is on the edge of being a business unit, remember to get the right drives. It can lead to issues, and not just a warning about it.

Well reasoned, thanks.

Another reason (like we needed more) to switch to iXSystems's TrueNAS Core / Scale.

Having 7 Synology Rackmount units in our enterprise (not my purchasing decision, was acquired before I started), I for sure will not be placing any orders with Synology for new NAS units. If I need a NAS and something from a vendor, it will be either TrueNas with iXsystems or a QNAP (which I've used and supported before). Sure, QNAP isn't the best but with all of the non-sense QNAP cloud and external connections disabled, it's a pretty solid platform for filesharing, and no hardware limitations/whitelists.

I have a DS920+ and ran into this… I had an 8TB Ironwolf drive fail. It was within warranty, so Seagate replaced it with a remanufactured drive. Using that remanufactured drive, it gave me a warning that it was not supported… so clearly, even though the base drive model is supported (model ST8000VN0022), the Synology picked up that my remanufactured version wasn’t technically on their list. EDIT: I’m wrong. That model is not on their list. Geez! As an aside, with the failure of that one drive, my whole DSM had to be reinstalled… not sure why that was, but I didn’t lose any drive data. But I did have to reconnect it to QuickConnect as if it were a new NAS….

if they would have pointed there "proline" out better, it would be fine. in the past we hade good expierience with there RS-Series and IronWolfs Pro of Seagate. Reliable and Cheap. For a recent project we did 3 RS2421 with 36HDDs (just SMB Shares that replace microfocus servers). Using Synology Disks instead of Ironwolf pros would have make each drive 100Bucks more. almost 4k is a huge deal. we rather upgrade the ram

similar process happens with SFPs.. laptop batteries, Coffee k-cups . more often it's probably just to create a revenue stream rather than an actual issue one would encounter..

There is a way to get rid of that error, you have to ssh into the box and add you drive & driver information to the compatibility list in the Operating system. From what I read that error goes away then. I not for sure if that is the case since I don't own a flash station..

Hello Tom, Been using 20TB Ultrastar drives with DS220+,DS1621+ no issues so far

I am using 218, 220+ at my friends and now I wanted to buy a DS723+ (2-bay unit) and yes there is the same problem. Normally I wouldn't hesitate to buy that unit, but now I am checking options to replace ABfB and Synology C2. Because the availability and prices of Synology drives are ridiculous!

Using a DS200j with WD Blue 8TB cmr drives, currently in the process of replacing it with a Truenas build, but I will keep the Synology for photos and syncing them to the Truenas box.

Tom, put all the same unverified drive and then the color will be the same.

It's like the cannon ink problem you don't want using non Canon ink but we now can't get the chips because of a chip shorted so your printer thinks you're not using genuine ink. But I have to print the TPS report.... at least they allowed a mechanism to bypass not the case with HP that now requires an account to use the scanner. What made the industry work with standard. The Internet, the IBM AT standard, etc. I understand why they're doing it but they need to be an I acknowledge button.

How ironic that an HP Instant Ink ad preceded this video. Beware the vendor lock in.

I definitely think there ought to be a way to mark the warning as acknowledged/ignored.

Its kind of like printers, that will show warnings, if you insert knock off ink/toner.

Its like a step backwards from them to the bad old days of HP and Dell where "Non Manufacturer" drives caused permanent warnings, adding a checkbox for getting rid of the warning but accepting that performance "might not" be as good should have been done already

I think that's a valid request to "allow". I am using mixed older HDDs in a Ubiquity NVR. I had to try a few in order to get 4 "good ones". Similar issue.

This is why I don't use Synology anymore, I build my own NAS servers and I used to sell my own branded built servers to customers with more hardware choices and support with longer warranties (up to 512 drives in a system). Whilst I understand their reasoning on drive compatibility, stability, and reliability it still smacks of "non-branded compatible ink cartridges" constantly throwing up messages from printer drivers. They just want to line their pockets. The Synology drives are just manufactured drives by Toshiba and have a cost premium enforced on them. Whilst these Synology drives do have custom firmware and are, supposedly, touted to deliver 23% better-sustained read performance versus other NAS-focused HDD's I believe this is anti-competitive and takes away customer choice.

I think we all need to vote with our feet more. Meaning, if we don't like this mandatory drive feature, we should not buy from Synology. I'm advising my management to go elsewhere, probably TrueNAS. However, like Tom said, if Synology's mandatory drives don't bother you, go forth and buy.

Thank you for the video. Just to be clear, you talked about HHD, not SSD. Is my impression correct the smaller home-friendly versions (Synology DS923+) will work fine with SSD's that are not on the list?

This whole drive "certification" thing started with Western Digital REDs for NAS using SMR instead of the tradditional CMR. This is true for TrueNAS. You do NOT want to use SMR drives as resilvering performance is so bad that it would take 10x longer than it should. It took awhile for the community to finally figure out the cause. Thanks to backlash towards WD they now label the drives as it should so we know what we're buying.

You can enable support for all drives by editing the configuration

HP does the same thing and one of my clients has unverified drives. Odd fan behaviour and I need to check the ipmi interface every time I’m doing my checks it shows a perpetual alert.

I'm using non-verified drives in my Synology (3 drives, in 2 different pools) and when creating a new pool with unverified disks it warns about it, but after that there is no warning in the storage manager.

Long time Synologynuser, now looking at QNAP

Hey Tom 👋🏻

I was unaware of this before watching your video on the FS3410. I'm looking to replace a 3617xs with an all-flash solution, sticking with Synology would have made things so much easier, but this is a complete deal breaker. Their SSDs are unacceptably expensive and incredibly hard to even find. Who is Synology even marketing these to? Actual enterprise customers aren't buying canned Synology solutions with tiny 8-core CPUs and 16Gb of ram. Do they expect small businesses to just double their budget just to make an error message disappear? I don't get it.

The problem is that models that are model years 2021+ that didn't have this issue in the 2019 model years is the issue, especially for the plus series. I can understand the enterprise models for this restrictions but the plus models don't make sense

I share your thoughts on this! I understand why Synology is going into this direction with enterprise devices, I really do! BUT.. This is just ridiculous! We just bought a 3621xs and got the same exact thing - unverified drives error! Compatibiliti list was at the time almost empty with just all Synology OEM drives and they just thrown 4 random 3/4TB HDD's to the list just to keep us, the customers, quiet. To be honest, the NAS is not "locked" since it works but this is just stupid! I agree with the idea about check box - give me an option to ignore "Unverified" status - I use HDD's at my own risk! No need to spam my inbox with bunch of warning mails with volume being "critical" every day. Also, even if the drive is unverified, there is no need to hide information like allocation status, bad sector count and temperature from us! This is just annoying.. And, to be fair, there IS a workaround and then you get all the info about drive status - so why hide the info? This is the main reason why I dont agree with Synology's idea with compatible drives.. And another aspect of this issue in our country (Slovenia) is, that our distributor doesnt have a warehouse filled with Synology drives so replacement, when drives fail, is not so fast as I would hope! On the other hand, I can get a replacement IronWolf PRO in half an hour.

Wow, now I have to find a new brand. Been using Synology in our MSP business for 13 years. See ya!

A two-drive NAS is basically useless. As you say he works with them and he is bound, even if it's just at the subconscious level, to be optimistic. The truth is they can change the definition of enterprise to "having 6 bays" or to "having an Intel processor" or "supporting 2.5gbe+" which is becoming more and more common in servers. If you don't have a need for C2 I will say go with QNAP. The easy-to-use advantages that Synology used to have are no longer that relevant (it is easy for example to expand volumes with Hero). Qnap also has better hardware at similar prices. Finaly Synology is getting a ton of money with the move, if you don't want everyone to do the same and sell you drives costing 2x or more the retail prices is time to move and let them know why you did the move. I used to recommend Synology to small businesses, I no longer do.

I have 4 Synology devices from 4 to 8 bays and even though I have been very happy with them, I won't be buying any more unless they change this setting. I always use WD Gold drives and don't plan to change. Only my 1823XS+ shows the Unverified drive, since these drives are verified on the oldersynology models. Nothing but synology drives are verified on this unit.

Here's my question for you to answer please! Can you use shucked drive in a Synolagy NAS please?!

What do you think about BTRFS(that synology uses) compare to ZFS? For me it more feature rich, but less time proven, what's your thoughts?

Even if I was an enterprise, Im totally fine and appreciate having a list of approved/validated drives. However, forcing me to buy their rebranded drives so they can make an extra buck on a product that is already fairly expensive, that is a toxic business model. Synology doesn't make drives, so its time to see main brand manufactures on that list (Seagate, WD, etc)

The trickle-down of this trend is slightly more apparent when you try to put a 2.5" SSD into a 3.5" bay of the more permissible models.

Tom, you said you talk with Synology engineers - so how do they justify Synology drives at double the cost of the OEM model and do they provide any proof?

dell at one point didn't allow third party drives at all for a year ot two..they got so hammered(in terms of cancelled orders) dell had to back off that policy...:) at least synology isn't locking the systems down that far.

As someone who hates errors and warnings on my systems, I will not survive the constant annoyances from Synology

Synology is just one of those brands I wouldn't personally go for. I'd either roll my own with XigmaNAS or maybe FreeNAS, or just buy a bigger name SAN box. But, granted, I haven't really looked at higher end Synology boxes. Also, "please no" on the "shocked face in the thumbnail" thing. ;)

Any way to make it not complain by using the terminal? Thanks for the vid! Was curious myself.

I honestly don't believe they did this to maintain consistent performance. Are we all forgetting that these Synology drives are just rebranded hard drives from WD/Toshiba/Seagate etc? - You can already do firmware updates to those drives from those brands in Linux, I've done it with the StorCLI utility from LSI (loading firmware payloads from Seagate and WD onto their drives through a controller in my host OS). Also, the other NAS makers like IXSystems, Qnap and Asustor are not using own branded drives. They use WD Golds, Seagate Exos and Toshiba MG series. You can't get more consistent than one of the enterprise drives from one of the only three hard drive manufacturers. This is just Synology charging a premium. Like in the UK the Synology RAM modules cost 4x more a standard Samsung RAM module with the exact same specs (32GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM 2666MHz). It's a similar markup on their SSD's and Hard Drives. Synology's system of qualifying drives as they have done for over a decade worked fine. They could have just added a section to those lists saying if you use x y and z you get the performance we say on the product page and if you use these other drives they'll work but we cannot guarantee performance. Making their own branded drives is just a way to upsell.

I ordered a Synology DS1821+ specifically because I have a box full of working drives, none of them made by Synology (of course), and I want to get some use out of them. The NAS hasn't even arrived yet and already I hate Synology. What a terrible company, to do this to users!

I think when drive vendors started abjectly lying about drive behaviour under raid and similar condition, I will give synology a pass here. I don't know if their drives come at a higher price - I'd hope they remain competitive. In the end, large disk systems have high risk - and some even say large disk arrays are done. But the one thing everyone wants is reliability, and trust in the system. The drive vendors really screwed the pooch. They really did. Can't blame Synology in this area.

Ppl ask me this so often. Despite the fact that I have never installed a synology system for anyone. Ill bookmark this video to send as a response in the future ;)

What actually starts to happen is the more unofficial drives you add, they will start to hum Bad to The Bone more and more

Definitely an annoyance with Synology, particularly when they do not add the largest size drives as verified. Imagine if server motherboards and operating systems had this limitation. Quite frankly they should just have a test to certify and the option to put the nas unit into uncertified mode.

Netflix at least gives you the specs of the camera you should film with. They don't force you to a specific brand.

Adding Synology to the do not by list. Since certified only disk is vendor lockin and they are going down the route that dell emc and hp did. Long live ceph

If Synology starts requiring their own drives in consumer or even prosumer models and I’m out. They already did this for caching drives (to an extent) and that’s as far as I can really accept for a home lab device.

You're doubting Synology is going to be dogmatic about their compatibility list on their lower end, consumer-level models "any time soon," I'm at your video precisely because they are. Seagate ST4000NE001? Not good enough, must be ST4000NE001-2MA101. Exactly because I'm a home user and not a professional sysadmin, I don't want to see problems, so my two beautiful IronWolf Pro 4TBs will be relegated to providing backup. Hopefully Synology will deign to allow them to connect over USB to my DS220+.

At least they don't brick your NAS, but... still, it's pretty aggressive.

This is very annoying behaviour from Synology. We had some 10 bay units with expansionNs shelves that had failing dual power supplies. All the drives were in the compatibility list. Had to buy new units as replacement power supplies are unavailable. I had to do a disk swap into the new chassis with 22 working drives, all of which are not compatible with the new chassis. To those that don’t think this is a cash grab, the disks are double what the equivalent NAS drive from any of the mfrs is. Replacing the drives on one of these units is over 20k, and a 10k premium over just buying the same model that’s in the box now.

The problem is that by throwing all these fake errors will mask you from noticing a real error that could cause a failure. Its a dangerous way for Synology to play the game and reminds me when Apple was (even more) closed to allowing anything else in their ecosystem. I just bought my first Synology and its a DS, so thus far this isn't an issue but I hope they don't expand this point of view.

I think it's really unfortunate that Synology is, so it seems, starting to go deeper in this "walled garden" (hint intended) direction.

This really stinks, I agree that they need like a disclaimer that you are happy to run other drives. Really became a problem recently when we had to wait 6 weeks for synology drives to come into stock when alternatives were plentiful. It’s pathetic and greedy

This makes me want to buy a Synology NAS just to fill up every last bay with unverified drives >:^)

Like the bad old days of Dell.

And so, you'll miss real error drive's notifications...

This only confirms I will never use one of the higher end solutions, and will stop using their desktop solutions if they start this crap with them. That being said there are an abundance of high quality drives on the market that are rated for RAID arrays and have no issues performing extremely well, simply a money grab.

At least Synology doesn’t do like HPE and make the fans run at full speed and scream about it lol.

Yup, this kind of thing will prevent me using Synology until they undo this kind of thing.

The reason for no button is: "creating value by satisfying the administrator's OCD"

Synology will lose a large customer base over this, I'm sure. Apparently there's a work-around the warning message by editing/hacking a particular file by adding IronWolf HHDs to the list.

Personally speaking I f****** hate this compatibility list I bought a 4 x Western digital red Nas (18 Bay generic) and there was constant complaining constant head crashing almost to the point of fakery.... Where I had to send the drive back just to go and buy one of their white label pre-programmed pre-approved set of hard drives And you know they're Enterprise drives are just white label drives probably from Western digital or Seagate with special firmware on them If you buy a drive that's nas and it meets the drive limit AKa 4 or higher then it should just work This is literally squeezing the little guy literally forcing you to do something you probably don't want to do spend more money 💰💰💰 💸💸 They even have compatibility for Ram and SSD not just hard drives so if you truly want to have a 100% compatible system in a four-based system you'll have to spend something like $4500-56,000 when you could get away with this with less than $2,500 just because they want specific white label models that you know they do not produce themselves

Synology has an amazing product with Drive and Active Backup for Business. And then they go and squander all of their good will with this nonsense. You're already paying absurd amounts of money for the overpriced hardware. $7k for a SATA6g backplane, 16GB of RAM and a D-Series integrated 8 core Xeon? That's like $1-2k in hardware. So you get the privilege of paying an extra $5k... then they charge you another $3k in overpriced 10-year-old hard drive technology. Jokes on them. I'm just going to run Active Backup on a $500 "consumer" box. Not in a rack form factor, but plenty fast for backing up VMs and hypervisors.

This is the same reason I refuse to use Apple products.

I moved away from synology quite a while back, their "enterprise" solutions is pretty poor when you compare it to other manufacturers like Dell for example. I wish I moved away from it earlier because now I've got 3 rack stations that I'll have to live with but at least I don't have to worry about drives...

It’s all a scam to sell more of their own kit. I understand having a certified list of drives but it shouldn’t stop you using non verified drives as long as you are aware that it’s your problem if there are issues.😊

“Predictable performance”. You mean charge 2x for the same volume drives? Their drives are preposterously priced. Especially knowing they’re essentially rebadged drives. What is so silly is they have been in business for how long and verified how many tens of drives before but magically don’t now? We see where their eyes are set and it is clear. They’re just going to begin to lose business over it. Many professionals are leaving them due to this arrogance.

I just won't recommend there product as long as they have this in place. If you want to require drives sell a populated unit. Otherwise it is a conflict of interest. That is my opinion.

Dude I get what you’re saying but synology will never ever do that. Making you buy their stuff is how they make their money. I have one of their disk station NAS units and I’m sticking with that.

ok so this is a reason for me not to buy synology then. You might want to pass that on to their engineers. So at this point do I just build my own solution or go with another brand? More research to do I suppose.

And...that's why I didn't go with Synology.

Synology police show up at your door and arrest you and your family.

That error message is plain stupid, ppl get used to it and it will hide any real issues..... 1:04 If you value your data dont make that mistake again.....

My short take is Synology, Qnap, and the other Taiwan designed storage/NAS products, are poorly designed with many problems like this one. They all seem more focused on form over function and trying to increase their profits with as much forced proprietary nonsense as they can get away with. To make things worse the Asian business model seems to be one of following your Asian competitors instead of offering a genuinely better solution. So, in effect, they create this uniformly bad set of products they justify around their closest Taiwan and a Chinese competitors are doing the same thing. It’s just WRONG but they don’t seem to get what’s important. A product like Truenas completely shames anything Synology, Qnap, Asusstor, Terra Master, etc, makes. Truenas is function over form designed for data security and performance rather offering a karaoke app with microphone jacks like some Taiwan storage vendors do. If you look at the security pages of Synology and Qnap they’re full of frequent serious bugs/exploits. They just don’t get it.

Synology is dead to me over this BS!

Synology = poo