India has pushed back the date from which standalone hard disk drives must carry BIS registration. In a Gazette notification, S.O. 5689(E), dated 16 October 2026, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) says the implementation date of its May order "stands extended to 1st May, 2027". The earlier date was 5 November 2026. If you build NAS boxes, homelab servers or CCTV storage, or buy and sell bare drives, you have roughly six more months before unregistered HDDs fall foul of the rules.
What the rule covers
On 5 May, MeitY's S.O. 2204(E) changed entry 50 of the Electronics and IT Goods (Requirements for Compulsory Registration) Order, 2021 from "USB Type External Hard Disk Drives" to "Standalone Hard Disk Drives". The standard named is IS 13252 (Part 1): 2010, the general safety standard for IT equipment. That order said USB external drives "shall continue to be governed as per the existing notified provisions", while the rules would apply to "all other standalone HDDs" from the new date. Neither notice defines "standalone", but the change is aimed at drives that are not USB external units, which most likely means bare drives sold on their own. The ministry gave no reason for the delay.
What registration means
According to BIS, under a registration order "no person shall manufacture or store for sale, import, sell or distribute goods which do not conform to the Indian standard specified in the order." Manufacturers must have the product tested at a BIS-recognised lab and register with BIS, and only then can they put the Standard Mark on it. When the May order came out, a government official told The Hindu that the aim was to stop used and substandard drives from being imported and sold at retail.
What this means for you
- Buying a drive for a NAS, DVR or homelab: from 1 May 2027, look for the BIS Standard Mark and R-number on the label, and check it in the BIS Care app under "Verify R-Number under CRS". Make sure your exact model is listed.
- Importing or reselling bare HDDs: use the extra months to confirm that the models you stock are registered. Unregistered stock can't be imported, stored for sale or sold after the new date.
- Using external SSDs: these are not affected by this change. USB external SSDs above 256 GB are already a separate entry in the scheme.
Image credit: Hard drive photo by Zzubnik via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Graphic by CircuitDigest.
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