I’m running with a laptop and Ubuntu 6.10, and during the night a very small access to the HD every 3-5 sec is annoying, plus can maybe shorten the hdd life time.
This is a bug is oppened:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/17878
You can check if your are involved, type:
sudo hdparm -y /dev/hda
or (for sata)
sudo hdparm -y /dev/sda
to stop then hard drive wich should spin down and up just after a while.
A temporary solution is to enable the laptop_mode, but the hdd stop after 5sec, a bit annoying.
sudo laptop_mode start
and then edit this file:
/etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf
To makes it start on boot and set the halt drive time at 10 min