Synology is doubling its commitment to proprietary hard drives with the HDD Plus series, a range of hard drives for servers in office or home environments.

Synology is very pleased that you also install Synology drives in a Synology NAS. In 2021, the company therefore launched its own initiatives for the enterprise market. The range was soon expanded and now Synology SSDs have also appeared on the shelves. Now, Synology is launching a series of drives for NAS devices in SMBs or at home with the Plus series.

Synology itself points to numerous advantages with its own drives. For example, they are well tested (with DiskStation servers), firmware updates are easily implemented via DiskStation Manager (DSM), and customers who choose the drives can count on the company’s support for both their NAS and leave the available disks. Worries.

specifications

Synology HDD Plus series consists of four models with the following capacities:

• HAT3300-4T: 4 TB, 5,400 rpm, 202 MB/s, air – 90 euros
• HAT3300-6T: 6 TB, 5,400 rpm, 202 MB/s, air – 150 euros
• HAT3300-8T: 8 TB, 5,400 rpm, 202 MB/s, air – 190 euros
• HAT3300-12T: 12TB, 7200rpm, 240MB/s, Helium – $240

The drives would be a mean time between failures (MTBF) have one million hours and are suitable for a utilization of 180 TB per year. Synology states that the drives are based on CMR technology. They all have a 256MB cache buffer, but the speeds quoted are for larger sequential writes. The drives come with a standard three-year guarantee.

Competitive

Synology doesn’t go into detail about suggested prices, and while the drives are generally available immediately, we note that their availability on digital store shelves is relatively limited at this time. In addition, the effective price is usually somewhat higher.

The Synology Plus series drives are direct competitors to Seagate IronWolf and WD Red. The advertised price is quite competitive and the integration with DSM is certainly a plus. It’s easy to see why Synology would want to leverage its position as a NAS manufacturer to monetize the drives built into it.

Synology doesn’t build the hard drives itself. The manufacturer doesn’t share details, but the first HAT drives in Synology’s enterprise segment were Toshiba MG06ACA800E drives with a different shirt. In all likelihood, these hard drives also come from a Toshiba factory.

risks

The strategy carries risks. With the advent of proprietary hard drives comes stricter hard drive compatibility requirements for Synology NAS devices. Traditional brands like Seagate and Western Digital are suddenly taking a backseat, indicating Synology’s ambition to push customers towards its own ecosystem.

Although these drives benefit from integration with DSM, keep in mind that basically any NAS or server hard drive is suitable for use in a DiskStation or RackStation. Functionally, there are no disadvantages compared to a non-Synology drive in a Synology NAS. Hopefully, the launch of the Plus series isn’t the start of another foreclosure of the ecosystem, but merely a welcome entry into a market where the NAS maker does have a place.