Kubuntu is constantly(Not crazy, every second the light turns on for the hard drive io) doing some kind of reading/writing to the hard drive. Is this normal? and is it possible to find out what programs are doing io to the hard drive?

Thank you

Open a konsole/terminal window and issue the commandthat will (or should) show you basically whats going on - and what might need some more investigation.

regards

John

How may I use top to know which programs are doing read/write operations? I don't know how to get more info on commands with names such as "top". Google doesn't get usefull pages.

Thank you

Short anwser - no.

As for finding info on any command you see mentioned use the manual system - "man <commandname>" generally works. Only works if you have the command installed - else try google for "manpage <commandname>"

Update:
Maybe you can find out. Have a look at this. Describes how to use a Ubuntu LiveCD, and a USB stick to keep data. Note the comment at the end (Outstanding questions) re how much data is saved, and when.

It is most likely one of the KDE apps polling to check if media is inserted. The name(s) of the service escape me at the moment but you can check in kcontrol center under services. In earlier KDE I was able to disable it without much of a problem except having to manually unmount CDs but I get more problems in the newer KDE in Debian Sid right now with it disabled so I leave the infernal light to blink. I have a Lian Li case with a large HDD light and it is awfully annoying. But I don't think it is actually writing to disk, just polling on the IDE channels.