Securely Overwriting HDD for Reformat

So, i'm really new at partitioning, and overwriting data before reformatting.  I was wondering ...

Am I going to fuck something up to the point to where I can't fuck up anymore?

And...

How should and what should I overwrite the data with (specific programs, boot disk types)?

Tips on partitioning and how -you- personally partition your HDDs would be nice too.

>Am I going to fuck something up to the point to where I can't fuck up anymore?
If there's no data you need to recover on the entire disk, you can always start over with a blank slate.

>How should and what should I overwrite the data with (specific programs, boot disk types)?
If you mean wiping the disk to prevent data recovery, I use bcwipe for Linux.  Also try DBAN (http://dban.sourceforge.net/).  Just don't have any disks you want to keep in the machine when you use it.  It'll wipe every disk it finds.

I do all my partitioning with fdisk under Linux.  Even the Windows disks.  For formatting, anything other than NTFS and HFS+ I do in Linux.  FAT32 pretty much has to be done in Linux because MS is an asshat.

When you partition a Windows machine, set it up so that the OS is on a partition separate from your data.  That way, you can reinstall Windows without having to make another backup.  I have an 80GB drive like: 20GB NTFS for OS, 40GB NTFS for data, 20GB FAT32 for transferring between OSes.

>FAT32 pretty much has to be done in Linux because MS is an asshat.

Oh, and actually I forgot that Macs can do FAT32 correctly, too.  Only Windows artificially limits the size of FAT filesystems.  Fucking retarded.

>>3
"Only Windows artificially limits the size of FAT filesystems"
There are reasons for it. Lurk moar.

>>3
"Only Windows artificially limits the size of FAT filesystems.  Fucking retarded."

That's like bragging because you can make a 120-track audio CD. Congrats. It no longer fits CD specs, and will fail to work in many players. Not following the rules of a filesystem != better support.

>>4

Reasons being that they want you to use NTFS.  Which is fine for most people, but if you're just storing pics and movies on it, FAT is okay and is actually usable by every fucking OS.  If Microsoft would stop being gay and released specs for NTFS and allowed other filesystems into the kernel, we'd all be more than happy to use a better filesystem.


>>5
YOur analogy is wrong.  From the wikipedia:
"In theory, this should support a total of approximately 268,435,438 (< 228) clusters, allowing for drive sizes in the range of 2 terabytes. However, due to limitations in Microsoft's scandisk utility, the FAT is not allowed to grow beyond 4,177,920 (< 222) clusters, placing the volume limit at 124.55 gigabytes, unless "scandisk" is not needed [3].

FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 OSR2, although reformatting was needed to use it, and DriveSpace 3 (the version that came with Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98) never supported it. Windows 98 introduced a utility to convert existing hard disks from FAT16 to FAT32 without loss of data. In the NT line, support for FAT32 arrived in Windows 2000.

Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 filesystems of any size, but the format program on these platforms can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32 GB. Thompson and Thompson (2003) write[4] that "Bizarrely, Microsoft states that this behavior is by design." Microsoft's knowledge base article 184006[3] indeed confirms the limitation and the by design statement, but gives no rationale or explanation. Peter Norton's opinion[5] is that "Microsoft has intentionally crippled the FAT32 file system.""

So it's more like, every OS can burn audio CDs, but Windows can only burn CDs with less than 4 tracks.