Maybe some logfiles ? Try "lsof" for to see all open files.
Among about 600 open files if searched for 'var' and 'log' and the only noticeable result was that the file "/var/run"pppd.tdb" is opened by pppd whose purpose i don't know. Anyways SuSE says in /etc/sysconfig/powermanagement # Normaly the update-daemon every 30 secs flushes the disk buffers to # the disk. Metadata as fileownership and timestamps are written even # every 5s. So your disk won't sleep for longer than 30s, if any file # has been changed. You can modify that behavior to wait longer before # a disk syncronisation. But beware, that all data that was not synced # will be lost, if your machine crashes in between. If your system is # running stable, you can save much more power, by doing this. # There are 3x2 variables to modify this: # - the time to max. wait before syncing data # - the time to max. wait before syncing metadata # - the fill level of the disk buffers that triggers a sync # > each of these for battery mode and ac mode. # Default: "30" seconds that way the log files theoretically might not be the problem. regards, Alex