NAS drive guides

Short, opinionated answers to the questions people actually ask before buying drives for a Synology — written from the same official compatibility data this site is built on.

CMR vs SMR Drives for NAS: Why It Matters More Than Brand SMR drives can cripple a Synology NAS during RAID rebuilds. How to tell CMR from SMR, whic…

Can You Use SSDs in a Synology NAS? (And When It's Worth It) Yes — but the role matters. SSDs as primary storage vs read-write cache vs scratch volume …

Synology SHR Explained: Mixing Drive Sizes Without Wasting Space SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) lets you mix drive capacities intelligently. How it works, when…

Mixing Drive Sizes in a Synology NAS: What Works and What's a Bad Idea Yes, you can mix capacities and even brands in Synology NAS — SHR handles it. The rules, t…

WD Red vs Red Plus vs Red Pro: Which One for Your Synology? Western Digital's three NAS lines explained: SMR traps in plain Red, CMR in Red Plus, 7200…

Seagate IronWolf vs IronWolf Pro: Same Name, Different Animals IronWolf is CMR NAS storage for home; IronWolf Pro adds 7200rpm, 550TB/yr workload and 5-y…

Do You Need Synology-Certified Drives? The 2025+ Policy, Plainly Synology's drive policy is tightening on newer models. What's actually required, what chan…

How to Check If a Drive Works With Your Synology (60-Second Method) The exact workflow: find your model, search the part number, verify capacity — plus the tw…

NAS Drives vs Desktop Drives: What You Actually Pay Extra For Desktop drives are cheaper per TB — until vibration and 24/7 duty bite. Vibration sensors,…

2-Bay vs 4-Bay Synology: Drive Strategy Before You Buy the NAS The NAS you buy decides the drives you can use. Bay-count trade-offs, SHR strategies per c…

Synology's 2025 Drive Policy Explained: DSM 7.3, Third-Party Drives and Your Compatibility List What Synology restricted in April 2025, what DSM 7.3 walked back in October, which models …

fnOS (fnNAS) Hard Drive Compatibility: No Whitelist, No Locks — What Actually Matters fnOS is software NAS: it does not restrict drives like Synology's 2025 policy. What to kno…

fnOS Official NAS Hardware: EVO2, EVO4, BASIC4, EVO4 PRO and the Beelink ME — Drive Bays, Drives and What Installs fnOS Fnnas's own NAS line-up (EVO2/EVO4/BASIC4/EVO4 PRO AMD & Intel, plus the Beelink ME mini) …

fnOS vs TrueNAS vs Unraid vs OpenMediaVault (2026): Which NAS OS for Your Drives? How Fnnas fnOS compares with TrueNAS SCALE, Unraid and OpenMediaVault: file systems, ZFS, …

Beelink ME mini NAS: Drive Slots, SSDs and fnOS — What Fits and What to Buy The Beelink ME mini is a 6-slot all-flash NAS (N150) sold with fnOS in China and Windows g…

Beelink ME Pro on Kickstarter: Modular AI NAS — Models, Bays, Drives and What to Expect Beelink's ME Pro modular NAS heads to Kickstarter: swappable compute modules, 2/4-bay chas…

Installing fnOS in English: Step-by-Step from a Chinese-Only Official Guide The official fnOS install guide is Chinese-only. This is the full English walkthrough: ISO…