Using an “optimized” test case for testing hardware and/or software of a computer. The optimized test case is designed to be run on a data storage device including multiple read locations and multiple write locations. Initialization data is written, on the data storage device, only to the write locations of the data storage device. The optimized test case is run on the data storage device in a manner so that the optimized test case will only write data to each write location after that write location has had initialization data written to that write location. The optimized test case defines read locations and write locations so that, during running of the optimized test case, all read locations which are also write locations will be written by a write instruction of the test case before being read by a read instruction of the test case.