Madhu,
> However, I'd like to have a utility that lets me see which programs are
> accessing the hard disk at any given instance.
> Do you know of any such utility?
Take a look at Diskmon [1] by SysInternals [2]; it's freeware.
James Aylard
1. http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/diskmon.shtml
2. http://www.sysinternals.com/