graeme_p - 4:14 am on Feb 23, 2013 (gmt 0)

I'm not sure if that means it just cannot read the contents or it would not be able to format that virtual portion of the HDD

The former. It is possible to read Linux file systems from Windows. If it is a recent Linux install it is probably an ext4 file system (you can check using "disk utility" from Ubuntu) which may mean you cannot write to the Linux file system from Windows, but you will be able to read it.