THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES A Behind-the-Scenes Story on Applying Cross-Layer Coordination to Disks and RAIDs By

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. iii To my father Weiming Qian and my mother Jianping Cai iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Andy Wang, for his guidance and support.