Power Management Properties for HDD not being obeyed

Hi,

I am running Windows XP Professional on a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop.

Everything was running fine when I noticed that from a few days, my HDD spins

down automatically every couple of minutes or less! I can hear the distinct

sound, and can verify that from the load cycle count increase. My laptop is

always plugged in. I checked that my power settings through Windows and Dell

Quickset were both fine -- none allowed the Hard Drive to power down by

itself in any state. The drive is not being overheated or anything, it just

spins down and then starts back up immediately. I would like to disable this

unreasonably frequent spin-down as it's useless and is wasting the HDD.

I can say that this is a software issue, since when I boot into another OS,

I never have the frequent spin-downs. While I did change the power settings

from the "power options properties" in Windows once recently, I have since

then tried reverting back to original settings from the same menu, and also

through Dell Quickset. Nothing has worked.

I would really appreciate any suggestions to fix this. Please DO NOT simply

suggest going through the power settings options in windows or Dell Quickset

since I've tried those more than once. There are no power settings in the

BIOS to control HDD spin downs -- and I have not changed anything related to

that.

Thank you!

Regards,

Apurv