Cannot Format my hard drive

Hello,
I was having a problem with one of my two hard disks, the one with the Operating system (Windows XP).
I was getting the following message:
"Pri Master hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. status BAD, Backup and Replace "

What I did was to set the other disk as primary, install Windows XP on it and set the problematic disk as secondary.
Everything is working fine and I can browse the problematic disk but I keep getting the same error message when I turn on the computer.
I tried unplugging the disk and I dont get the error at all.
But since I can browse the disk which seems fully functionable I've decided to format it in case the error message dissapears.
To my dismay though I couldn't do it because Windows wouldn't let me, I think because of a pagefile.sys error. Then I put the Windows CD in, restarted it and performed a DOS Format.
After the DOS Format I kept getting that error message.
Browsing the disk from explorer shows you the "pagefile.sys" file and nothing else.
Can I get rid of it? And if I do will it fix my problem?
There's no option in the BIOS to disable the SMART capability and I dont want to dispose a 150GB disk. Please help.
I

 

The S.M.A.R.T. function is usually quite reliable. Run the disk manufacturer’s diagnostic utility on the drive and if this also reports problems then don’t trust your data to this hard drive. You can either go to the drive makers web site and look for and download the diagnostic utility, or get this bootable CD which has most makes of utilities included.
www.ultimatebootcd.com

When you installed XP on the other hard drive it must have put the pagefile on the 160gig drive. It usually does this if the drive or partition you are installing Windows to is not very large. You need to move the pagefile in to the XP install. Right click on the My Computer icon and go Properties>Advanced>Performance-Settings>Advanced>Virtual memory-Change, and set a new pagefile on the XP drive and set the one on the 160gig to ‘No paging file’

Once you have moved the pagefile the drive will no longer be in use when you are in XP and you will be able to format etc. You should also run a bad sector check and repair on the drive. Right click on the drive in My Computer and choose Properties>Tools>Error Checking-Check Now… and put a tick in the box for bad sector scan/repair and click start.

Delpart will remove partition details and may indeed cure a problem with a corrupt partition table, which can be a cause of many problems. I would suggest wiping the entire drive as this will also remove any other problems that might be present in the boot records www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm (this app is also on the ultimatebootcd). Best to remove your good hard drive from the computer before you proceed with Killdisk, in case you target the wrong drive.

 

I just wanted to make clear that when I installed Windows XP on the healthy drive the problematic drive was connected as well.
So there might be a connection between the Windows XP installation and the pagefile.sys on the problematic drive.

However when I disconnected the problematic drive Windows XP still worked fine...(Without the need of the "pagefile.sys" file)

Do any of these make any sense ?

 

XP can adapt and create a new page file when one goes missing, but it will continue to use the one on the D: drive if it is reconnected again. If you have formatted D: in the mean time, XP will still see it as the D: drive on bootup and so recreate the pagefile on it.

Hi Christer. Yes killdisk or any zerofill app will completely remove partitions details. It of course wipes everything, where as with Delpart you can be selective and leave good partitions if you want.