Formatting a partition: Eliminate bad sectors?

Hi!
I was wondering if formatting a hard disk partition "eliminate" or "mark" the bad sectors so that the drive can still be usable?

i think i got this bad sectors(4kb) when i deleted a 20gb virtual disk, the one that virtual box uses although i'm not sure if that was possible.

I used hdtune and saw that "reallocated bad sectors" is highlighted with the values:

Current: 6
Worst: 6
Data: 1883(if i remember correctly)

question #2:
can i "still" use my hard disk?

Thanks for the help!
Much appreciated.

Go to Start/Run and type in chkdsk /r...
Let it run to completion.
Checkdisk marks bad sectors...format does not.

Thanks for the quick reply.
I actually did that before and even with the /r /f parameters just to make sure the bad sectors are marked but got no good results after that. I ran spinrite's level 1 test and it seems to have fixed some. S.M.A.R.T. Reports the drive as good, contrary to its report before using spinrite.

Hmm.. Alright.. I will post my checkdisk results ASAP. Maybe there's just a "logical" bad sector perhaps?

For future reference chkdsk the /r switch assumes /f...so no need to run the /f switch.
/r does both.

Hi, S.M.A.R.T. affims SpinRite's performance in my case. Before using SpinRite, S.M.A.R.T. Gives me the error "disk status: BAD", but now, my disk passes the POST and S.M.A.R.T. tests. I've read some articles that some bad sectors are just logical errors so i'm just trying to see if mine's the same. I appreciate your info.