Western Digital (WD) RED NAS hard drives a Ploy?

Like StephenB says, you add up the cost of 4 new drives of desktop class, at 2TB and 3TB sizes, it's a lot of money your having to lay down. And it's a large leap of faith your taking at the same time. One of my friends has a Duo v1. He only ever switches it on with his main PC. It's not online 24/7. But he also doesn't run much in the way of automation add-ons, so this situation suits him. My NAS is on permanently, 24/7 and I'd wager the same is true for a lot of other folks on here. A desktop-class drive isn't rated for this kind of usage, and four enterprise-class drives would be prohibitively expensive. It's a calculated risk.

WD identified a gap in the market. They did what any company would do, attempt to fill that gap. The stranger fact is why Seagate, now WD's only realistic competitor in the HDD market, hasn't followed suit. But if I were a betting man, I'd lay odds on this situation not staying like this for long.