Partition Format on Mac Mac newbie here. I need to have a case sensitive file system. I am planning to create a separate data partition for that. 100GB (Mac/home directory) + 151GB (data partition). I have a habit of making a separate data partition since my Linux days (while building a new system). It seems like the separate data partition appears as /Volumes/data_partition on Mac, while it appears as /data_partition (as in, direct descendant of / ) for Linux. Is my understanding correct?

What kind of Formatting should I use for the separate partition? Again, I want to make it case sensitive, and it needs to work with Linux too. Is "Case-Sensitive, Journaled" okay?

My first preference is a separate partition, but do you recommend a dmg (not sure about advantage/disadvantage) in stead of separate partition? Any major disadvantage of using a separate data partition? I am assuming it will be slightly slow considering it’s a different partition. My MBR has an SSD, so I am assuming it shouldn’t be too bad.

Please note this partition will only be used to hold data (not as a boot partition as I am not planning for dual boot). 

Thanks in advance!!!
Yes, you are correct. /Volumes/(name) is the mount point.
Mac OS Extended (Case-Sensitive, Journaled) is the best case-sensitive option. I'm assuming you know what you're doing with case-sensitive partitions.
The biggest disadvantage, maybe, of creating a separate partition is that you can't use Boot Camp if you have more than one partition on your startup disk before partitioning for Boot Camp, meaning that you can't use Boot Camp at all if you only have one hard drive on your Mac. You said that you want the separate partition for Linux; do you mean that you're going to run Linux in Boot Camp?