For instance, sequential access can achieve a throughput on an average disk of up to 63.5MB/s (megabits per second), whereas random access can only be executed at 1.5MB/s.

In practical terms, this disparity means that one customer executing lots of random reads and writes is using a lot more of the system's resources than another customer who may be accessing the same amount of data through sequential accesses, even though both customers are charged the same amount.

In the long run, this practice would provide no incentive for customers to establish more efficient data transfer practices, and fiscally penalize those customers who do have such practices in place. It could also erode the profit margins of storage providers, who may not have accounted for these inefficiencies in their original plans.

Other factors may heighten this disparity between workloads even further, Wachs said. For instance, disk caching may eliminate the need to access the disk at all. In cases where caching is used, the customer may actually be severely overcharged. Also, excessive metadata lookups to find the appropriate data location may consume an inordinate amount of resources.

"This is an unsustainable approach because either the client or the provider will be unhappy," Wachs said. "The clients with the easy requests will pay too much and the clients with the difficult requests will pay too little."