When multiple I/O requests arrive for disk access, we need a simple, fair way to decide the order of servicing them.
FCFS (First Come First Serve) processes disk I/O requests in the exact order they arrive, like a queue at a store.
- Request queue maintains arrival order
- Disk arm services requests in FIFO order
- No reordering or optimization
- Simplest disk scheduling algorithm
- Fair (no starvation)
- Can be very inefficient (long seek times)
- Example: queue [100, 50, 150, 30] → services in that order
- Built from: Disk Scheduling, Disk Structure
- Builds into: SSTF, SCAN
- Related: Disk Structure
- Contrasts with: SSTF (optimizes vs simple FIFO)
- Can cause wild swings across disk (poor performance)
- No consideration of seek distance
- Simple but often impractical for real systems