Tools Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Feb 23, 2026 4 min read

iotop for Disk IO Investigation

iotop shows per-process disk IO.

Usage

iotop -P shows per-process IO.

-o shows only active processes.

Suspect disk-bound process.

Surface the culprit immediately.

pidstat -d 1 for non-interactive.

Both work; pick by use case.