[CentOS] Constant disk activity

first last wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I am running centos on a laptop and the HD keeps on making noises every
>so often, even when I go to runlevel 1 and stop everything that could
>be doing so (hotplug, smartd, cron, anacron, atd, syslogd...).
>
>Is there any way of finding out what is accessing the disk? Not only it
>shortens battery life, it is annoying while working in a quiet room.
>
>
>  
>

Are you running a journalling file system?  It's probably just the disk 
syncing the journal periodically.

Cheers,

C