In a video server hard disk storage unit, video layout ensures average case bandwidth and case seek time during bounded-time information transfers, to maximize access of users S. The storage unit includes D hard disks whose platters are divided into Z zones. Each movie is divided into i blocks and is striped across all D disks such that movie block i is stored on disk (i mod D). In one embodiment, movie block i is placed in zone (i/D) mod Z of disk (i mod D). User streams are organized into slots containing N=S/D streams and the number of streams in each slot accessing a zone is ≤ (N/Z). Seeking is to the nearest end of a set of accesses, where total seek time for a set of N accesses is ≤ N*seek (1.5/N). Preferably two storage buffers/stream are used. Admission policy permits stream assignment to any slot, but streams do not transfer until the needed data block is on the disk needed by the other streams in the slot, and until the block is in the proper disk zone. A second embodiment optimizes disk seeks by placing movie block i in zone (((i/D) + (i mod D)) mod Z) of disk (i mod D) to reduce buffer unit requirements. The S streams progress in order 0 to S-1 through disks 0 to D-1, all streams accessing each disk from the same zone before moving through the disk in another zone.