OS: Win XP SP3 (with all updates)
Drive: Samsung HD501LJ

I'm working on a potential HDD problem and would appreciate some advice.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a power failure as my HDD was in the process of writing to the HDD. Immediately after that, Win informed me (twice) that it was necessary to run CHKDSK. This was done both times and errors were fixed. Subsequently, one of my programs wouldn't run because of a corrupted file. I reinstalled and all was well.

Yesterday I got the following POST message: "Primary Master Hard Disk: S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD, Backup and Replace." (I backed up immediately.)

After some investigation, I found and ran the Samsung utility "HUTIL". After a full run, it reported two errors:
1. Error SMART Threshold Exceeded
2. C:4210 H:1 S:1096 Error: ECC error

I'm assuming that the power failure during a write operation physically damaged the disk surface.

If I'm correct, can I reformat the HDD and reinstall everything and everything will be OK? (I'm assuming that FDISK will isolate and avoid the damaged sector.)

Am I correct or do I need to do anything else? (i.e. short of replacing the HDD)

The drive needs to be recertified but you can't do it at user level. If you were here it was simple, you have to contact Samsung for service. It's relatively quick and cheap.