[Matt Krass]

Unfortunately I can't agree with anyone that this is a software issue. Especially not after a reinstall, plus you described an unusually long format. It sounds like you've had a permanent failure on the hard disk part, I would not trust it with anything. Get a secure copy of everything important on the drive, from both OSes and then I highly recommend you order a replacement drive from Dell. I've dealt with recovery of damaged hard drives a lot in the last year as the school tech because our school went cheap on the drives and enclosures and we encountered this countless times. Not once were we ever able to certify a drive as reusable.

Needless to say, the department in charge of ordering new equipment, hated us

EDIT: On another note, a low-level format is an entirely unrelated procedure that is no longer applicable. It was used to mate the CHS values of a disk to a specific controller ages ago, it has no effect on the drive in the manner described.