> work. That combined with a generic enclosure and Western Digital drives 
> will probably be our resolution. Western Digital has a great head park 
> feature that if the drive loses power it uses energy from the spindle to 
> park the heads.
> 

Western Digital also has a great feature of planned obsolescence.  That 
is, after they turn 1.5 (+/- .5) years old, they just stop working one 
day.  At least that has been my experience, with about 6 different 
Western Digital drives in the last couple of years.  The 250 GB capacity 
is the worst of them all, but I've had a few other capacity drives fail 
as well.  Its also convenient for them that their warranty was only 1 
year in the era when they built all of those junk drives.  I think that 
the warranty is longer now - not that that helps you get your data back 
when the thing fails.

If you are mailing things back and forth, I would try to stick to camera 
  cards or USB sticks, if their capacity is great enough.

Dan

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Daniel Armbrust
Biomedical Informatics
Mayo Clinic Rochester
daniel.armbrust(at)mayo.edu
http://informatics.mayo.edu/