That's interesting, because the NAS manufacturers (Synology and NetGear/ReadyNAS) fully support desktop drives in their products and don't include these kinds of warnings in their drive compatibility lists. I don't think the issue is as explained when using these products specifically. In other words, they're designed to work on a wide assortment of drives, including standard desktop drives.

If the author was seeing disk failures every 3 to 4 months with the Drobo, maybe it was time to switch NAS platforms a lot sooner - or drive brands.