So SpinRite is a data recovery program. Although that one is good for maintenance and powerful for recovery, so far I don't think I will be needing (or buying) it as the HD hasn't crashed... yet.

What this HD has are physical bad sectors identified after running scandisk. But since then, I have reformatted twice and defragmented about once in between and no new bad sectors have developed.

Carpas, I'm curious as to how your friend locked the bad sectors.