I have had Suse 9.1 dual booting with XP quite happily for some time using 2 hard disks, with XP having most of the 120Gb C drive. The other drive (160Gb) is partitioned with Windows owning half.

First problem: C drive (XP) giving errors and unable to read some files.

My response: copy a load of data to the other drive, mostly the Linux side so that I could put it on DVD as a backup. I thought I would get more on the DVDs if I compressed the data first.

Second problem: the compression I tried (zip, etc) did not seem to like the files that I had copied from XP and I tried several programs and settings to try to get them archived before the machine hung! I had to reboot and cannot now get as far as the login page. I get the impression that the Linux partition has been filled (it had over 20Gb free before this). The boot stops at:
setting up loopback interface lo
The keyboard types to the screen but seems to have no other response.

How do I access the disk to delete the rubbish without logging on?
Another hard disk is on order to replace the failing one. How do I make the new disk (the dual booting one) take over from the old without losing any data from either system?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Schrod

Welcome to LQ!

Before we start, allow me to exhort you to provide more details, such as error messages you encounter, which distro you use, why you believe your hd is irreparably broken, etc.

To gain access to your Linux partitions, you need to use a bootable CD, such as Slackware Disk1, or, preferably, a live CD such as Knoppix. You'll have to mount (or remount rw, as the case may be) the partition in question before you can make any changes.

Thanks to Charred for suggesting Knoppix live CD. Using this enabled me to access my Linux partition and delete a file to give some working space. Suse then booted normally.

However, I now have over 20Gb in my /tmp directory. How do I safely reduce this?

Also, how do I install my new disk (the dual booting one) so that it can take over from the old without losing any data from either system?

To answer Charred's other points, I have Suse 9.1 dual booting with XP using Grub, the booting of Suse wasn't stopping with an error message (now solved with some freed up disk space). The C drive on XP is giving errors and unable to read some files and has become too slow to do video editing (for example) but transferring the files to my other drive works OK. Chkdsk seems to want to correct lots of disk errors. This is why I thought I would get a new replacement drive for booting and then perhaps reformat the current one and use it again if it seems better.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Schrod

Please go to "My LQ", click on "Edit Profile", and fill in as many fields as you can.

Good sources of knowledge include:
The Slackbook
Rute User's Tutorial and Expostition
Linux Newbie Administrator Guide

The first two are my favorites.

Edit:
I'm not sure why you felt the need to replace your hd; fix your disk and it'll work fine.

Have you tried running from a WIN command prompt (with the XP disk in the drive), or booting into the WINXP repair console?

IIRC, one or both of these should fix the problem with C:\.

P.E.E.:
Assuming the /tmp you're referring to is on your Linux partition, it contains temporary files, and you can safely remove them. If you'd like to automate the removal of temporary files, go here.

P.E.E.E.:
In reference to the "second problem" in your original post, your problem was you tried to compress over 60Gigs with only 20Gigs available. You're right--you flat ran out of room.

Compression programs don't just take data and stuff it into the compressed file. IIRC, data gets temporarily stored before it is compressed, and the compressed data is appended to a temporary compressed file. The completed compressed file is then checked for errors, then copied to the final destination.