[CentOS] Drive activity every 30sec

[nate]

Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> I have a Centos installed on a Hitachi 2.5" drive that shuts off really
> quickly, it seems.
>
> So every 30 sec, the drive makes the sound of an access activity.  I
> have looked trying to find what might be being updated.  Swap drive
> usage is 0 bytes.  No activity in /var/log.  What might it be and can I
> do anything to lessen the drive access (improve battery life)?

I'm sure there are other things as well but first thing comes to mind is
disabling atime for your file systems, to test the change you can do this

(for each of the mount points)
mount <mount point> -o remount,noatime

e.g.

mount / -o remount,noatime
mount /usr -o remount,noatime

You can verify the options by running 'mount'. If this does the trick
you can add the options to /etc/fstab, e.g.

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults,noatime    
   1 1

nate