In practice the only time I've ever heard of something like that bite are serious firmware bugs (i.e. a counter overflow causing drives to cycle after 45 days of uptime - source: I work for a major CDN with a six figure drive count).
There are some statistical properties I recall that will make mechanical failures spread somewhat nicely, maybe someone can elaborate if they have a background in stats.
There are some statistical properties I recall that will make mechanical failures spread somewhat nicely, maybe someone can elaborate if they have a background in stats.