Interleaving in Disk Storage
Historically, interleaving was used in ordering block storage on disk-based storage devices such as the floppy disk and the hard disk. The primary purpose of interleaving was to adjust the timing differences between when the computer was ready to transfer data, and when that data was actually arriving at the drive head to be read. Interleaving was very common prior to the 1990s, but faded from use as processing speeds increased. Modern disk storage is not interleaved.
Interleaving was used to arrange the sectors in the most efficient manner possible, so that after reading a sector, time would be permitted for processing, and then the next sector in sequence is ready to be read just as the computer is ready to do so. Matching the sector interleave to the processing speed therefore accelerates the data transfer, but an incorrect interleave can make the system perform markedly slower.
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