Reallocated Sector Count Field

If it were me, I wouldn't trust it. It's already been marked as bad. Not as a warning, but as flat out "This sector is bad, no doubt about it."

By nature of SMART, it's programmed the way it is to find real problems vs. good drive (duh). If it says they were bad, I'd stick with that.

Ask yourself one question: Is it easier to replace a drive or the data?

I could be done but you probably wouldn't want to.

When an error occurs when a sector is written the drive replaces the bad sector with a spare and then rewrites the data and there is no data loss. The "Reallocated Sectors Count" is a count of these sectors. But things aren't so simple when an error occurs when a sector is read. Remapping the sector would not be a good idea because this would prevent recovery of it's data if a later read operation were to succeed. Instead the drive makes a note of the bad sector and waits for one of 2 events to occur. The "Current Pending Sector Count" is a count of such sectors.

1. If the sector is later successfully read it can be remapped with no data loss. Unfortunately you have no way of knowing when this will occur or even if it is possible. The read operation may succeed at the next attempt or it may fail after 1000 tries.

2. If the sector is later written to it can be remapped with no data loss. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing when or if this will occur. If the sector contains frequently modified data the wait may not be long. But if the sector contains a system or application executable file it may be long time before it is updated, or it may not happen at all.

Note that all of this occurs entirely within the drive with the OS having no involvement or knowledge of the operation. The drive provides no means of identifying which sectors are involved, just their number. It could probably be determined with drive specific software designed for the use of data recovery professionals. Such software is designed for professional use and priced accordingly.

With no way of knowing which sectors are involved there isn't much that software can do with them. Doing a clone backup of the drive and then restoring it would force the pending sectors to be written and allow then to be remapped. With an image backup you have no assurance that the sectors involved would be written. And the data in the bad sectors would be forever lost. And with a large drive this would take considerable time.

There really is nothing to be gained by forcing the reallocation. There is no advantage in successfully reading a remapped sector with the wrong data over failing to reading the original sector with the original data. And there is a chance it may eventually succeed if not remapped. If the sector is later written it will be remapped with no data loss.