Interleaving (disk storage)

In block storage devices such as hard disk drives, interleaving is a technique used to improve slow system performance by putting data accessed sequentially into non-sequential blocks, typically sectors.

Information is typically stored on disks in small pieces referred to as sectors or blocks.

Data to be written or read is saved to a special region of reusable memory referred to as a buffer.

This wait for the disk to spin around to the next sector slows the data transfer rate.

To correct for the processing delays, the ideal interleave for this system would be 1:4, ordering the sectors like this: 1 8 6 4 2 9 7 5 3.