Easy way for a recursive directory listing

I need to get a recursive directory listing with the output going to a file of all the files in a web server's directory in the form:

/path/to/file/file1.html
/path/to/file/file2.gif

i.e. one file to a line with the full path. The easiest way I can think of isbut as this is a production server, I want something that won't hit IO too hard (CPU shouldn't be a problem as the command will be run from a different server, just searching a file system on production machines). It is load balanced over two servers which I don't have direct access to, so I can't use top to watch them and kill the process if need be, so I want to make sure that I am doing it the most efficiant way before starting. Any ideas?

find and ls both call opendir(), scandir(), readdir(). Those are about the only choices.

You can nice the process, but you already said there isn't much CPU contention.

you really need to know what you want
scan or not scan
find is the way
ls make (internal) a sort, so a (very) slower way