Knowing which process is accessing disk mostly

[Owen Townend]

2008/8/15 Ashish Yadav <ashishyadav26 at gmail.com>:
> Hi All,
>
> Many a times it happens that I see a lot of disk activity even though
> I am not running any programs. Looking in System Monitor doesn't show
> a column for disk activity or any related information.
>
> How can I sort out processes to know which is the process, which is
> accessing disk most actively?
>

There is a console monitor 'atop' which can do network and disk usage
per process. The default view is only totals as a kernel patch is
required to get the more detailed stats. I too would be interested if
there is a monitor out there that can present this type of info
without a kernel patch.

cheers,
Owen.