Formatting a disk for Macintosh using Linux
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                Ken Bloom
            
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        Published on 2011-01-09T05:17:34Z
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            2011/01/09
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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?
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