Bad sectors in a modern hard drive are almost never seen or noticed any more... Drives formatted in NTFS (NT File System) have better ways of "hiding" or flagging bad sectors so they are never seen or felt

err that's what spinrite is specificly for.....
it recovers bad sectors and moves them to good sectors.

But yes u are right when u say its not a permanent fix. it's just a solution to recover data. I picked one up from work today neway, so i can load teh image. spinrite saved me from having to do a full reinstall.