I am a semi new user to Linux, but in general I'm not too familiar with setting up a custom operating system and computer environment. I have a Sony Vaio laptop that I use to run Vista on and it's crashed a couple times. So I got a new laptop.
I have run multiple versions of Linux on my old laptop but they never seem to work and I have gotten messages regarding problems with the hard disk. I'm guessing there is something corrupted on my hard disk.
Is there a way I can reinstall, or even do it without reinstalling the OS, and let my system run separate from where there might be an error on the hard disk?
I'm somewhat new to the whole OS and Linux environment, so please don't respond with lingo I won't understand.
Maybe I could create a partition that is only blocking a certain part of disk, or something along these lines?