loftar wrote: Other than that, I can't say I know how to measure cumulative head travel distance or any other relevant measure.
Afaik you can't measure - only thing i know the larger the files to read/write the more they travel
(That's why manufacturers mostly just give an "average" seek time and not specify single data for read seek time, write seek time, track-to-track seek time, and full stroke seek. Each specifies the time it takes for the hard drive to position the head for a particular operation. While most "consumer" HDDs are in the same range anyways.)
loftar wrote:However, it should be said that if the disks were strained by seeking, I'd expect the SMART "Raw Seek Error Rate" attribute to show that by detereorating over time, but the only thing I have observed with the disks over time is merely that they start getting reallocated sectors, which I, for one, interpret rather as a sign of media failure. I've no clue what would cause it, however.
Heat, Vibration, Shock or a refurbished disk where most spare/reserve sectors are allready used and a usual test program won't show any errors - can happen when there was a slight contact of head with platters before "refurbishing"... to be honest i have no clue in how filesystems or corrupt (micromigration) controllers can cause reallocation (as i have maintained mechanical issues only so far)
"All your data belong to us and we are dev|null" probably not causing bad sectors but full wipe... 
Do you like Fishdicks?
