Using 'noatime', and other options inetcfstab, correctly

Hi all; Is it possible to use the 'noatime' option inetc-fstab with the (big) caveat that I'd like it to affectvar only. The DIRvar ....unfortunately var is not it's own parbreastion. :-( You see, this HD install (-dev-hdc) is a small HD (WesternDigital ~9.1GB only), so when I installed Debian Sarge 3.1r1, I let the installer just use the entire disk;

~$ catetc-fstab

proc proc proc defaults 0 0dev-hdc1 ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1dev-hdc5 none swap sw 0 0

dev-hdd media-cdrom0 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0dev-hdb media-cdrom1 iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0dev-fd0 media-floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0dev-hda1 mnt-p1 vfat ro,user,noauto,umask=000 0 0dev-hda5 mnt-p5 vfat ro,user,noauto,umask=000 0 0dev-hda4 mnt-p4 vfat ro,user,noauto,umask=000 0 0

for fear that I'd make one or more of the 'usually' separate parbreastions too small...ie; (-var,tmp,home,usr, ,boot, etc.).

As you can see from above output of 'cat', hdc1 and hdc5 are the relevant Linux parbreastions ..and hdc5 is aswp parbreastions anyways - so everything (-,boot,home,etc,usr, you get the picture) is all on hdc1.

Is there any way to specify the usual 'mount -o' of 'noatime' inetc-fstab ? and have it only affect a certain DIR (-var in this case). Perhaps there's another method I could employ for that matter - perhaps there's a completely better and different way to accomplish my goal...which is;

"To stop this NOISY and LOUD Hard disk from writing every friggin 3 seconds to itself" -- for whatever reason(s) it's doing this, I'm not sure (maybe it's defragging, sort ordering, or what I suspect: it's updating the inodes - but perhaps it's some stupid cookie META data from Bookmarks updating it's SuperCookies...who knows) .. but I need make it Stop!

If you think it's an issue withvar or with bothvar andtmp - let me know. Again - bothvar andtmp (as well as all others) are only DIRs, and not separate parbreastions unfortunately.

If you think it *can't* be stopped using the 'noatime' option, let me know. If you think I *can* stop it some other way - suggestions are welcome

Thank you in advance for any insightful info;

Oh BTW - yes, I've reviewed the 'man fstab' and 'man mount' pages, but being somewhat new to linux, I thought I'd ask *before* applying rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, and async.) though I'm not certain I want-should 'keep' it that way. Any Advice? Just noticed; is the 'async' option perhaps the culprit? I doubt it, since this constant 'writing' does not seem related to I-O syncing, it seems to be some sort of 'updating' 'sorting' 'filing'...whatever.

hmmm... You know, it could also just be some unneeded, and unused network daemon (samba, nfs, or similar) that's installed and running (I chose the +FileServer option, along with +Desktop, during the Debian Sarge installation procedure).

I can post the output of whatever (relevant) shell command will yield more specific info necessary; $ df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted ondev-hdc1 8364900 2819724 5120260 36% tmpfs 96080 0 96080 0%dev-shm tmpfs 10240 760 9480 8%devdev-hda1 10231392 1587296 8644096 16%mnt-p1dev-hda4 35236248 5756408 29479840 17%mnt-p4dev-hda5 15351120 14589552 761568 96%mnt-p5

I can post 'ps aux' output and any other relevant command output

Other relevant info perhaps; using KDE 3.3.2 2.6.8-2 Kernel (vanilla) Debian Sarge 3.1r1

I eventually plan on moving this install onto a new QUIET 80GB HD and hopefully able to create and separate-place the DIRs onto separate parbreastions, but that's another beast to slay when I get there...and I'm not even sure that's feasible to do that ....yet. Thanks for your time.