Can you install Tiger onto a drive with data?

Hello,
I would like to ask if you can install Tiger onto a hard drive that already has data files on it. I have a 250 GIG hard drive and it already has 10 GIGs of data on it. Can I install Tiger on this drive or might it corrupt my files?
Its a long story but here is a quick summary of why I am attempting to do this:
I have a 350 MHz Blue and white G3 (rev 1) with two hard drives: the original 12 GIG ATA drive and a 250 GIG SATA drive (internal) connected with a 1S2 Seritek SATA controller.
My 250 GIG drive has two partitions but only one is available to Tiger. You see, by accident I originally formatted my 250 GIG drive with an extremely small partion (32 Megs). I meant to type "30 GIGs" and by accident I typed "30 Megs". Oops That was supposed to be my OSX 10.4 volume. Its too late now - its too small. So I only have two choices for a place for TIger: my 12 GIG drive or the other partition of my 250 GIG drive. I am reluctant to choose my 12 GIG drive because it already has an older OS on it (OS 8.6).
I was concerned about installing TIger on the data partition of the 250 GIG drive because that is where all my valuable data files are - 10 Gigs of data. I don't want to risk scrambling this data in any way.
Is it safe to install Tiger onto this partition with my data files? Or is the possibility it might do something to my data.
Its only a temporary install so that I could burn my 10 GIGs of data files to DVD for backup and then I will start all over again and erase the entire hard drive and reinstall from scratch onto the 250 GIG drive once my data files are safely backed up. (I will not partition the 250 GIG drive i nthe final install - it will be one big partition.)
One other question:
When you format a disk in Tiger are there options to "low level format" or "zero all data" or will just a straight "erase" do the job sufficiently? I bought my 250 GIG Hitachi SATA drive new and so I am not sure if it worth the time to re-erase it with "zero all data" (if that is an option in the Tiger Disk Utility). What is the best formatting option to prepare this drive in the most beneficial for Tiger?
Thanks for any suggestions.

Thanks scb and Jeff,
Jeff, you have me thinking now. I think I will be safe and try another idea. I have a 4 GIG internal SCSI drive I could use to backup my data in 4 GIG sections at a time via my Adaptec 2430 SCSI card. I could then move this hard drive over to my other G3 onto its 40 GIG hard drive. This would be done three times to take off all my data and essentially provide a backup before I install Tiger. Good idea. You are right. It is better to play it safe.
By the way 8.6 can handle HFS+. And yes, I should eventually buy an external drive solution - probably an enclosure. I saw one called "coolmax" [1]. It could hold a SATA drive and it had USB, firewire and also an external SATA port.
And also Jef thanks for the info about formatting drives. I am glad to hear it is not important to zero all data if you don't have to. I am not concerned about havig anything to hide and so yes, I will just click "format" - that should be fine. Zero all data takes such a long time and I would rather avoid using it if I don't need this feature. Thanks for the advice.
Thanks for the new safer direction.
[1] Coolmax (CD-311-SATA Combo)
Coolmax Aluminum USB 2.0 External Case/Enclosure for 3.5" SATA/IDE Hard Drives, USB2.0, IEEE1394a, Serial ATA triple interface input CD-311-SATA Combo
http://www.iocombo.com/product/showproduct.php?productid=0EGD&PHPSESSID=3c41735b f27252cf17a17350cb603e0e
$69.95
http://store.yahoo.com/directron/35enclosure.html
$53.99 at directron

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