Is there a way or a software product that can repair hard drive sectors in Linux? (Suse 10.3)

No, bad sectors are a physical defect and an unavoidable part of a HDDs life. Once you have a bad sector, you should backup everything on the drive and replace it immediately. It is a condition that will become increasingly worse until you are unable to recover data.

If the bad sectors are caused because the hard drive is old I agree
but in the past we said it can also happen by accident
In that case we belief that when you reformat the hard drive he also
marked the bad sectors and did not use the bad sectors again

good luck

Thanks for the reply. This started happening with my original 40G hhd so I figured it was old so I bought a new 80G hhd. Same thing, different numbers. 10.3 Suse DVD installation disc doesn't do well on "repair" I don't suppose I could use my 10.2 or 10.1 disc for repairs? The 10.3 disc in "repair" mode won't install.

I would burn and try:
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It has many interesting programs such as:
http://www.hdat2.com/
among others that may be of interest.

Bad sectors do appear on cheap or old HDD, but it doesn't mean the HDD should be replaced. If you HDD supports SMART, use 'smartctl' to do some tests and see if it is indeed beginning to fail.

I can't understand why so many people on here, as soon as someone reports problems with HDD, they say 'go buy a new one'. First make sure it is really failing, then backup your data, wait for it to fail, then when it fails, go buy a new one.

Because HDDs are cheap and replaceable, your data is not.

SMART tests are just estimates, they cannot and will not indicate conclusively whether or not a drive is in good condition. I have had drives in perfect working order fail under smartctl, and drives that were completely trashed pass. All smartctl does is read out values from the HDD's firmware and compare them with accepted metrics, it is no indicator of the physical condition of the media.

Some of the SMART selftests can be helpful, but even then, they are not to be trusted fully. I have had worked on machines where the HDD would even past the manufacturer's diagnostics, but still not function properly.

There is absolutely no way to reliably determine the extent and severity of physical HDD degradation from software (beyond telling you what has already been lost), so that is why you replace the drive at any sign of trouble. That is rule one, and always has been.

It's smart that is telling the bad "offline" sectors. The new drive was a Western Digital, same as the old drive. I was told to change the cable so I put a new one on it it went away for awhile and then recently I had to reinstall and the warning from smart came back. I don't have any data that's important but I'm getting tired of the reinstall process and honing the box the way I want it.

Maybe next time you should buy a better HDD. None of my HDDs have failed yet (with 1 exception) or report any bad blocks. I expect they will within the next 5-10 years. Now, my computers are not that old (5-7 years is oldest) and they are always built with high quality parts. However, long ago I did buy a Compaq, and the HDD failed within 6 months. Never bought Compaq again. I think the HDD was a cheap Western Digital.