Can't format second partition

Running XP Home SP3, fully up to date. System has two IDE hard drives, master and slave no RAID (hardware doesn't include it.) Master drive is 40gb and slave is 120gb. I have both drives split into two more or less equal partition halves. XP and programs are installed to the first partition on the master and backed up on the slave's first partition using a program named XXClone.

Lately, the second partition on the master had started giving me serious problems. Whenever I'd try to copy or move something to it, the system would lock up with the hard drive light remaining on steadily. I'd shut the system off using the power button (last ditch tactic) and reboot. The computer would come back on as if nothing had ever happened. I was able to access the data on the second partition, but since I never tried, don't know if I could move stuff around on it. The second partition was just a data storage area for me.

Since I have the master's second partition backed up on the slave's second partition, on DVD and on thumb drives, I decided to remove and recreate the master's second partition. That part went well. However, when I tried to format the newly recreated second partition on the master drive, it went all the way to 100% done but the red light came on and stayed there. I powered down and when I rebooted, the partition was still there but it's unformatted. I tried quick formatting it but it gave me a BSOD eventually.

Is there any way to get around this and simply block the bad sectors?

TIA
--
John Corliss
.

Relevant Pages

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