Here is the SMART data after the reformat.

The "Current Pending Sector Count" went from 2 to 0 (that's good, isn't it?) while the "Offline Uncorrectable Sector Count" remained at 1.

Isn't the "Offline Pending Sector Count" just the number of sectors found to be bad and remapped so they won't be used? Or do I misunderstand that completely.

At the moment I am running a Western Digital extended diagnostic test. The "Quick" test indicated that the drive "Passed". I think I'll cancel the WD diagnostic and give it a real test by seeing if it will successfully back up my "F:\" drive. My backup software isn't very robust, and crashes hard when it finds an unreadable sector, so it may be a more effective test than WD's.

tanstaafl.