With the latest firmware (2.2.10.18) the DriveList still exists, but it is not enforced (AFAICT). I just installed an unsupported SSD as my boot drive, and it boots and behaves just fine, albeit with an Invalid Drive warning.
I fixed that by adding another entry to the whitelist, and now even this drive shows up as preferred.
So please try this with a big HDD and let us know the results.