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Chickenhawk wrote:

There's no such thing as "Linux" hard drive formatting. Do you mean ext2 or 3?

Technically you format as various file systems.

Here are all the file systems that I have found which were developed for Linux.

Btrfs                 Linux
ext2                  Linux, Hurd
ext3                  Linux
ext4                  Linux
GFS                   Linux
GFS2                  Linux
GPFS                  AIX, Linux
Google File System    Linux
Lustre                Linux
NILFS                 Linux
OCFS                  Linux
OCFS2                 Linux
Reiser4               Linux
ReiserFS              Linux
XFS                   Linux, FreeBSD

I can't think of some quick and easy way to do what you are asking.

However, here is some advice that you can use (if you've got some time and determination...);

Install some virtualization software on your MAC OS X system (Virtual Box by SUN - http://www.virtualbox.org/ - is a very good and FREE solution, VMWARE Fusion and Parallels Dekstop are equally famous and efficient in the world of Macs - for a small price though...).

Then either install a Linux variant into a virtual machine or download some ready VM block from some of these vendors (Parallels and VMWARE have established communities or technology networks that allow their members to publish and exchange ready-made VM's).

Your last step would be to mount the Linux partition directly into the Linux virtual machine. Then, you could copy data between your Linux partition and your MAC OS X volume (all of these virtualization programs allow you to mount your physical MAC OS X volume into the virtual machine and access it in read/write mode).

Of course, you should know some Linux basics - but this is not a difficult task.

Good luck if you decide to go that way...

I tried Ubuntu inside Parallels.    The HD shows as an USB to SATA bridge, but Ubunutu won't mount it !!  Keeps giving an error -110