RCOPROB@HDETUD1.BITNET (Rob van Hoboken) (12/26/88)
Is there any program to speed up disk accesses to two files concurrently, e.g. sequentially reading from one file and writing to the other? The run of the mill disk caches only keep the recently referenced blocks incore while a more advanced disk cache could also prime the cache memory with blocks that may "soon" be read, aka pre-read. The cache may decide that a file is being read from the beginning, and that subsequent block will be needed shortly. Hence it may read these ahead of time thereby making use of the favorable position of the read/write head on the disk . Such a cache would speed up programs like UUD and ARC, which don't do their own buffering (compilers too?) and get stuck with TOS's non-buffered I/O, by eliminating or at least reducing arm movement on the disk. Please inform me of the existence of such caches, by direct mail if possible since I am not subscribed to this newgroup anymore. I only browse through the logs when I need some info....