No. You misunderstand. If the disk surface is damaged or faulty and fails to write to a sector it will create a reallocation event. Then it will mark the sector that it could not write too as bad.
Since the failure is caused by issues with the disk surface the sector magnetically or physically cannot be written too and smart flags it.
If you use a piece of software to force a 0 write too all sectors it is possible to trick SMART it will reset. However, this is manufacturer dependent. SMART may not mark it as a good drive until it has been written to successfully 10 times for example, instead of just one.
While zero writing a drive or using forensic software to attempt writes to a sector until SMART reads it as ok may make you feel more comfortable the drive is still fundamentally damaged since their is an issue causing the sector to not be written to to begin with.
Subsequently, this can work in reverse. SMART is only able to distinguish a failing sector after an attempt is made and it fails. Which means that if you have not already written zeros to a drive but decide to do it do too a failing sector SMART may even read MORE bad sectors if the disk is even more damaged than initially detected.
Sector damage and warnings should not be attempted to be reset out of good practice. If their is a damaged sector this is not a software problem, it is a physical one and the drive should be replaced.
I'm pretty sure that it's a read error that flags the current pending sector, not write, though if it can't be read then it also makes it difficult to write to as well!
Drives have contingency in case of bad sectors, and they are anticipated. The firmware will try to read the data on that sector and move it to one of the multiple spare sectors that it has. By doing a format, you are essentially telling the drive that you have written off that sector as bad and it is free to flag it and use one of the spare sectors for future writes. You're not 'tricking' SMART, just allowing it to carry out its intended function earlier: The current pending sector count will go to zero and the reallocated sector count will increase once this process is done.
Now, if the CPS count (or reallocated sector count) continually increases, that's when you know the drive is past hope.
Good practice in either case is to keep a backup of essential data.
Like you say though, if the drive itself has major problems and is dying, then of course there's nothing you can really do.
However, a single pending sector count doesn't warrant writing off the drive completely.
