Spinning disks absolutely do fail this way. Drives from the same batch can easily work 5+ years fine and then fail within a few hours of each other. Even worse,

Spinning disks absolutely do fail this way. Drives from the same batch can easily work 5+ years fine and then fail within a few hours of each other. Even worse, in a RAID the additional load from starting a new replication after a hot swap can push a borderline drive over the edge, and this is precisely the time when your data is at its most vulnerable. I've worked at places where they always maintained a sizable inventory of new disks so that every time a new machine was provisioned, it would receive a RAID comprising of at least 3 disks bought from different batches at least a couple of months apart from each other, and as much as possible from different suppliers.