MFSTOOLS always gives me I/O error

[MeStinkBAD]

Basically I guess you could say this is the first time I've tried playing around with mfstools. Anyhow I admit that I'm not as familair with Unix as I should be, never the less this just stumps me and now it looks like the disk needs repaired.

Unlike probably most anyone else, I'm using a VM (VirtualPC 5.2). This makes things MUCH more convient and allows me to do things otherwise impossible. Such as using the drive in an external enclouser and not needing to mount it in my computer. Doesn't matter how the drive is connected because to the software it looks like an IDE drive.

During boot this is what the drives list as.

hda: 131070000 sectors (67108 MB) w/64KiB Cache, CHS=8158/255/63, DMA
hdb: 98303520 sectors (50331 MB) w/64KiB Cache, CHS=6119/255/63, DMA
hdd: 78152400 sectors (40014 MB) w/64KiB Cache, CHS=77532/16/63, DMA
hdc: ATAPI DVD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Partition check:
hda: hda1
hdb: hdb1
hdd:

hda and hdb are both FAT32 formated virtual drives. hdd is the drive from the tivo. The size of the TiVo drive is 40 GBs which correctly shows up so I know it's identifying the drive like it should.

Well, everyime I try using mfstools i always end up with an I/O error and I'm not certain why. Seems to just be with the mfstools sweet. Unfortuantly I think it damaged either the partition table or boot sector or something, and well i've gotta repair it.

[funtoupgrade]

Linux may not be able to read virtual drives - I have no idea. What exactly are you trying to do with the 40GB drive? Is it the original Tivo drive? Do you have a good backup image or is that what you are trying to make? Might be helpful to know make and model of Tivo. Please list the steps you are trying one by one.

[Dan Collins]

I'm pretty sure mfstools works down at the physical level, so a virtualized IDE interface is unlikely to be compatible.