That's what I had considered as well. Specifically, that the wear out failures are on the right hand of the curve, meaning that other issues would tend to domin

That's what I had considered as well. Specifically, that the wear out failures are on the right hand of the curve, meaning that other issues would tend to dominate. What you said makes a lot of sense: failures due to thermal/electrical stress, manufacturing issues, and handling. Also, there's the controllers, which tend to be a significant source for issues. So yeah, maybe theoretically, the wear out would be a concern for raid. However, practically this is rarely an issue as other failures randomize the distribution enough to where this never causes a problem in-situ.