Is there `top` for disk usage

Question

How to track disk usage (write/read and other cool stuff) in realtime with fashion of top in the only right system in shell?

It would be cool if it could monitor specific directory.

Answer 1

There's a tool (top like) to track I/O :

iotop -oPa

$ apt-cache show iotop
(...)
Description-en: simple top-like I/O monitor
 iotop does for I/O usage what top(1) does for CPU usage. It watches I/O
 usage information output by the Linux kernel and displays a table of
 current I/O usage by processes on the system. It is handy for answering
 the question "Why is the disk churning so much?".
 .
 iotop can only run under a Linux 2.6.20 or later kernel built with the
 CONFIG_TASKSTATS, CONFIG_TASK_DELAY_ACCT, CONFIG_TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING and
 CONFIG_VM_EVENT_COUNTERS build config options on.
Homepage: http://guichaz.free.fr/iotop/