Methods, apparatus, and products are disclosed for optimizing execution of Input/Output (‘I/O’) requests for a disk drive in a computing system that include: receiving I/O requests specifying disk blocks of the disk drive for access, each disk block specified by a disk drive head, a cylinder, and a sector of the disk drive; determining I/O sub-requests from the I/O requests, each I/O sub-request specifying a set of adjacent disk blocks along the same cylinder; determining execution sequences for performing the I/O sub-requests; calculating, for each execution sequence, a total estimated execution time for performing the I/O sub-requests according to that execution sequence; selecting one of the execution sequences for performing the I/O sub-requests in dependence upon the total estimated execution times for the execution sequences; and instructing a disk drive controller to perform the I/O requests by performing the I/O sub-requests according to the selected execution sequence.