The Windows 2000 cache manager provides a high-speed, intelligent mechanism for reducing disk I/O and increasing overall system throughput. By caching on the basis of virtual blocks, the Windows 2000 cache manager can perform intelligent read-ahead. By relying on the global memory manager's mapped file primitive to access file data, the cache manager can provide the special fast I/O mechanism to reduce the CPU time required for read and write operations and also leave all matters related to physical memory management to the single Windows 2000 global memory manager, thus reducing code duplication and increasing efficiency.