To check File IO, this iotop is one of best solution.
“Linux has always been able to show how much I/O was going on (the bi and bo columns of the vmstat 1 command).
Iotop is a Python program with a top like UI used to show of behalf of which process is the I/O going on. It requires Python ≥ 2.5 and a Linux kernel ≥ 2.6.20.”
For Suse 11
Simply type “yum install iotop”.
Iotop’s homepage
http://guichaz.free.fr/iotop/