Guide: How to circumvent Synology hard drive restrictions

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This guide is submitted by community member User:JamesTDG, and is presented from the perspectives of linked references, with various modifications from Consumer Action Taskforce members.

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Main article: Synology requiring proprietary-branded drives to be used with its NAS

In early 2025, Synology introduced a requirement for new NAS models moving forward to be used exclusively with their branded hard drives. While at the moment this does not affect any of the company's NAS models before the change, owners of newer NAS models will lose vital functionalities for non-Synology-branded drives, such as lifespan analysis and automatic firmware updates. Additionally, storage pools are restricted for third-party drives and support for third-party drives are either limited or nonexistent.

Guide

Warning: It is possible that this guide may be outdated, or contain incorrect information, either due to changes made by Synology or for other reasons. It is therefore advised that the reader to follow this guide at their own risk, acknowledging potential for damage to the NAS or installed hard drives.

Some methods are aware of the wiki and are provided as references here.

HDD DB

Download the zip file from the GitHub page to a folder on your NAS, which is not inside a M.2. volume.

You can drag and drop this file onto your NAS and unzip the file, or alternatively use SSH and input the following commands into the command line:

cd $HOME

wget https://github.com/Consumer-Rights-Wiki-Org/Synology_HDD_db/archive/refs/heads/main.zip -O syno_hdd_db.zip

7z x syno_hdd_db.zip

cd Synology_HDD_db-main && ls -ali

Verify that the following files are in the same folder:

• syno_hdd_db.sh
• syno_hdd_vendor_ids.txt
• dtc or the bin folder containing dtc (only required if you have a E10M20-T1, M2D20 or M2D18 in a NAS that does not support them).

Now, you just need to set this script to run after an update, as any update will override the script. You can easily set the script to run via the guide provided by the HDD DB Github page.

Any changes may not be immediately visible, so it is recommended to restart your NAS after the script is first run.

There are additional features this script provides, and necessary troubleshooting so it is advised to further study the GitHub page if you are interested.

Alternative installation

There are also 2 commands you can run to circumvent the script should it be either too cumbersome or no-longer function.

Log into your NAS via telnet with the following command:

http://[ip-address of NAS]:5000/webman/start_telnet.cgi

Now after being logged in via root, input this command:

printf '#!/bin/sh\nexit 0\n' >"/usr/syno/share/get_hcl_invalid_disks.sh"  

Refreshing the web install page should allow for you to now use your incompatible drive with modern Synology NAS software.