[vox-tech] Formatting a disk for Macintosh using Linux

[Nick Schmalenberger]

On Sat, Jan 08, 2011 at 09:42:52PM -0600, Chanoch (Ken) Bloom wrote:
> I've been asked to move data from an old external hard drive to a new
> one, and to make the new one compatible with the Macintosh. (The old
> drive's USB connection has died, and I'm connecting to old the drive using
> a PC card that provieds an eSATA to the drive. The recipient's 
> Macintosh doesn't have a PC card slot, so she can't access the old
> drive anymore. Hence, the new drive.)
> 
> Naturally, I'm doing this data transfer using Linux. I've discovered
> that I can format the drive as HFS+ using mkfs.hfsplus from the
> hfsprogs package. But I need to know: do I need to do anything special
> with the partition table? Is there a special Macintosh partition table
> format that I need to format this disk to? If so, what tools can I use
> to get the right format for the partition table?
>
Macs do have a special partition table format. Try mac-fdisk or
parted to make the partitions. Parted supports lots of partition
table formats and mac-fdisk is just for the mac format.
Nick Schmalenberger