atop is a full-screen performance monitor for viewing system load. It shows the most critical hardware resources such as CPU, memory, disk and network. By default, it refreshes every 10 seconds.
Iotop is like top but for monitoring disk I/O by processes. It lists running processes alongwith the disk bandwidth (read/write bytes per second) they are using in real-time. It is written in Python and requires Python >= 2.7 to run.
Let's see how atop and iotop compare on various factors and features.
atop
iotop
Overall
Type
Type
Interactive system-monitor, process-viewer and process-manager
Text based monochrome interface with the exception of highlighting critical resources in colors. Columns are shown based on the size of the window. Columns are dynamically added or removed as you enlarge or shrink the window.
User Interface
Basic ASCII monochrome screen which refreshes automatically.
Scrolling Support
Scrolling Support
N/A
Scrolling Support
No
Mouse Support
Mouse Support
No
Mouse Support
No
Process utilization
Process utilization
Yes, shows all processes and threads.
Process utilization
No
Network Utilization
Network Utilization
Yes
Network Utilization
No
Disk Utilization
Disk Utilization
Yes
Disk Utilization
Yes
Comments
Comments
It is capable of reporting the activity of all processes (even if processes have finished during the interval), daily logging of system and process activity which can be collected and analyzed later.
Comments
Useful for monitoring disk I/O activity by process or threads. Use the -o flag to only display processes which are performing I/O. atop also displays disk usage.
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