What processes are accessing the hard disk?

[mshmsh]

Hi, I am running kde on gentoo.
I find that every 10-15 seconds or so, my hard disk start making noises, does this for a few seconds - sometimes 3-4 sometimes longer and goes back to being quiet. Very irritating. How can I find out what processes are accessing the hard disk during this time. I am guessing this is most likely some daemon checking to see if I plugged in new devices or some such, but how do I troubleshoot this. Usually the apps I am running at any one time are Firefox, Amarok,Kopete, konsole. But closing each of these didnt help much. (I also have apache and mysql server running on this box)

Is there a top like command for the hard disk? Any info that i can look for inside /proc?

Many Thanks,
Shyam

[nixnut]

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Other Things Gentoo.
Not about getting gentoo installed, so moved here.

Maybe some usefull info here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/how-to-see-what-application-uses-hard-drive-603976/
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