I think my hard turns off and on intermittently!

Well my XP SP3 laptop Sata hdd just spins up after every 15 mins or so and I hear a small but clear sound… I have turned off the ‘hard disk turn off ‘ option in the power management options but still I suspect its turning off and on….. because I havent heard that sound anytime before….
Also this has started happening after installing/uninstalling a software called
Notebook hardware control
http://www.pbus-167.com/
would that be a problem?
Answer #1
no one?
Answer #2
If the hard drive was spinning down while you’re running windows, I’m sure windows would crash, so this can’t be a hardware issue on its own. Besides the “hard drive turning off” option in XP, is there anything about putting the hard drive to “sleep” or standby? When I used to run XP, I remember using the “Always on” option. I looked into the Notebook Hardware Control and it sounds like this app has likely changed something. Was there a “return to default” button in Notebook Hardware Control? If so, install the software again, change a simple settings and click on the default settings button. Hopefully it will take your system back to its original specs.
Answer #3
you sure it’s the drive
it may be the fan
you try uninstalling Notebook hardware control
Answer #4
yeah mate… I installed it again and it had an option of power management in which “HDD will spin down” was checked… So I changed it to “Without spin down”
but I could not find a “default settings option” so I hope now it will not spin up and down….
and , I can distinguish between the fan and hdd so I know 100% its not the fan…..at first I thought so but then I did confirm that…..
Thanks for all your help…
Answer #5
On most HDD’s these days if the drive is idle, it stops spinning to reduce power usage. If that is your main HDD which the OS is installed on this is not normal.
If this is a secondary HDD then its perfectly normal. Test: my 500GB backup drive spins down with a click after approx 10 minutes of Idling.
Answer #6
oh ! yeah its my laptops hdd….. and its running my OS. I will observe a little bit more for that and will update. my fear is hdd crash due to spinups and spindown