A friend of mine who was a sales manager at Intuit told me that they were rewriting the next generation of their apps to run on a common cross platform base. (Currently the mac version seems to be a hacked up version of the windows version.) He did not know if cross-platform meant windows/mac or if it included linux, but if they're going to all that trouble, they'd be fools not to include the ability to run on linux. Especially since M$ has tried to kill them on multiple occasions. They recently appointed a new CIO, Lars Rabbe, who used to be CIO of Yahoo!, so he should be quite familiar with open source.

"Scratching" the platters is a non-issue. Most of the time they are made of polished Al and the magnetic element on them is pretty tough. What you have to worry about is everything from dust to finger prints. A single particle of dust in the path of the head is like a tree infront of a car.