What is trackwise?

Trackwise is a process of moving data from one physical location to another in a sequential manner across a storage device using tracks. One of the characteristics trackwise operations possess is locality -- that is, records with similar track addresses tend to cluster. Hence, after the first record in a data set is located the other related records will usually reside on neighboring tracks on the disk surface. However, the data block to be read on these neighbouring tracks will not be consecutive because they are interleaved with non-sequential blocks from other files residing on other parts of the same cylinder.

Thus, while there is sequential block transfers along a set of track the blocks themselves are actually stored quite far a part. Thus seek delays will not be completely eliminated in multi-user systems using trackwise ordering techniques. Therefore this scheme tends to favor users reading and writing long, sequential runs of blocks while penalizing operations on smaller files by the larger relative amount of arm motion they incur during their shorter runs within a track set.