Can't format second partition

Running XP Home SP3, fully up to date. System has two IDE hard drives,
master and slave no RAID (hardware doesn't include it.) Master drive is
40gb and slave is 120gb. I have both drives split into two more or less
equal partition halves. XP and programs are installed to the first
partition on the master and backed up on the slave's first partition
using a program named XXClone.

Lately, the second partition on the master had started giving me serious
problems. Whenever I'd try to copy or move something to it, the system
would lock up with the hard drive light remaining on steadily. I'd shut
the system off using the power button (last ditch tactic) and reboot.
The computer would come back on as if nothing had ever happened. I was
able to access the data on the second partition, but since I never
tried, don't know if I could move stuff around on it. The second
partition was just a data storage area for me.

Since I have the master's second partition backed up on the slave's
second partition, on DVD and on thumb drives, I decided to remove and
recreate the master's second partition. That part went well. However,
when I tried to format the newly recreated second partition on the
master drive, it went all the way to 100% done but the red light came on
and stayed there. I powered down and when I rebooted, the partition was
still there but it's unformatted. I tried quick formatting it but it
gave me a BSOD eventually.

Is there any way to get around this and simply block the bad sectors?

TIA
John Corliss