I've heard a lot of people saying that their hared disks was damaged because of trying to setup Linux or so. At last few days It was approved that not the OS which is the real problem but the problem is the bad use of the OS tools.
For example a check disk tool for windows damaged my most valuable partition with my most valuable data. I'm sure that I was the real cause. The story begins after a forced check disk at the startup of the Windows OS in a dual boot machine with Windows XP SP2 and Fedora Core 6. After the check I found no data on the partition. I've tried several times to restore the data but failed. Then I thought to use fsck.vfat utility in Linux the data was restored perfectly, so I restored some data into CDs and other partitions. After rebooting to Windows again it forced the check disk another time and returned to the starting point. I tried again to use Windows chkdsk to restore my data one of my tries ended with all data on the partition lost.
What I want to say is that the OS isn't the main reason for destroying data and hard disks but the main problem is the bad use of tools that may lead into lose of data. So don't accuse any tool of your bad use. At the end and beginning I thank my god that I've restored my most most important data.