Various embodiments of the present application set forth a computer-implemented method for accessing data comprising identifying a first set of read operations occurring during a first time period, where each read operation included in the set of read operations is associated with retrieving a different portion of at least one object from a storage system, determining a byte density associated with the set of read operations, where the byte density indicates a size of contiguous portions of the at least one object that were retrieved during the first time period, and determining, based on the byte density, a pre-buffering block size for a read operation during a second period, where the pre-buffering block size specifies a size of a portion of at least one object that is to be retrieved from the storage system.