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
.

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