My newer mountain bike uses Shimano Ice-Tech discs (SM-RT81) and JO4C
"metal" brake pads, with DT-Swiss through-axle wheels and XT brakes. In
June I installed a new front disc and brake pads, and neither is
appreciably worn yet.

Even if the wheel turned freely except for some scraping at the very
beginning, later pads and disc would begin to scrape again at one
segment of the disc. Sometimes this seemed to arise from just braking
during a turn. Awhile ago, after a lot of fiddling and multiple tries I
was able to bend the disc a bit to eliminate the noise and have the
wheel turn without binding. But now a very slight binding is back on the
same section of the disc. This isn't noisy, and I might have not even
noticed. However, now when I brake the brakes grab where they bind,
which feels like hitting a little bump at every turn of the wheel.

So some questions:

Can I just ignore the brake grabbing without long-term damage?

Ms. Google suggested bending the disc to avoid scraping. Is there some
other trick? Could it be that my multiple tries at eliminating the
scraping somehow damaged the disc?

Would it be advisable to replace the disc?

Other suggestions?

Thanks for your advice.

Ned