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Adaptive Block Rearrangement Under UNIX*


Sedat Akyürek & Kenneth Salem
Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742[Place]

Abstract

An adaptive UNIX disk device driver is described. The driver copies frequently-referenced blocks from their original locations to reserved space near the center of the disk to reduce seek times. Reference frequencies need not be known in advance. Instead, they are estimated by monitoring the stream of arriving requests. Measurements show that the adaptive driver reduces seek times by more than half, and improves response times significantly.


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