Yes. UGREEN NASync supports compatible third-party drives from manufacturers including Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. However, compatibility depends on the exact NAS model and drive model number.

UGREEN recommends NAS-rated CMR drives for always-on storage and RAID workloads. Before purchasing a drive, verify its model number in the UGREEN NAS Compatibility List.

UGREEN NAS does support mixing drives of different capacities. However, we strongly recommend against using drives of varying sizes within the same RAID array.

Standard RAID configurations generally calculate usable capacity using the smallest drive in the array. For example, combining an 8TB drive and a 16TB drive in RAID 1 normally provides approximately 8TB of usable capacity, leaving the additional capacity on the larger drive unused.

No. RAID can keep a storage pool available after certain drive failures, but it does not protect against accidental deletion, ransomware, file corruption, theft, fire, or failure of the complete NAS.

Important data should follow the 3-2-1 principle: maintain three copies, use two different storage media, and keep one copy off-site.

No.

• The DH2300 does not officially support Docker or virtual machines.
• The DH4300 Plus supports Docker but not virtual machines.
• DXP Series models support Docker and Virtual Machine Manager.

Yes. The UGREEN NAS mobile application supports automatic photo and video backup from iOS and Android devices. UGOS also provides file synchronization and backup tools, while Mac users can configure the NAS as a Time Machine destination. For the setup steps, see our step-by-step Time Machine setup guide. Windows computers can access shared storage through SMB and the UGREEN NAS client.

No. UGREENlink is designed to provide remote browser and application access without requiring a public IP address or manual router port forwarding.

DDNS is different: it normally requires a publicly reachable connection and router configuration. Tailscale is another alternative, but it requires Docker support and additional setup.