Ubuntu :: Monster File Means Failed Drive?

I recently had a problem with an absolutely gobsmackingly huge .xsessions-error file growing in my /home partition (over 200 GB--the only reason it stopped growing was that there wasn't any room left). So, I deleted it, and then to see what problems had been causing the file to grow so huge, I rebooted the computer to regenerate it. Big mistake.Since then, I haven't been able to boot. The process hangs when it reaches the step of mounting the /home partition. Luckily, I have my install CD, so I was able to boot into that environment. First, I checked disk integrity--everything was just fine. Then, I tried booting into the liveCD environment. Jackpot! It reports that the bus between /dev/sda6 and itself is timing out when I try to access the former home partition, but I can get into my / partition just fine.I have just edited my /etc/fstab file to *not* know about /dev/sda6, so hopefully it will boot properly (though of course without any access to the files on /home) soon. If this works, I will update.But, does anyone else at all know anything about this sort of problem and what I can do to fix it? Regenerating my /home partition on / merely postpones the problem and doesn't actually get me any of my files back.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't work. Actually, it sort of did, but not quite the way I wanted it to. I was indeed able to bypass mounting the /dev/sda6, but I was not able to boot into Xubuntu since the graphical log-in manager failed and none of the ttys started. The failure mode was, however, interesting. It did not merely fail, but instead flickered violently with a frequency of several seconds until I tried switching to one of the virtual terminals (C-M-!, if anyone is interested).