hard disk activity

[VSmirk]

I have a task that involves knowing when a file has changed.  But while
for small files this is an easy enough task, checking the modification
dates, or doing a compare on the contents, I need to be able to do this
for very large files.

Is there anything already available in Python that will allow me to
check the hard-disk itself, or that can make my routines aware when a
disk write has occurred?

Thanks for any help,

V