I barely know how to turn my computer on, but might a better title to this post be: Can you structure a problem that can be finished faster on disk than in-memory? It pays to be specific.
I am required to post the article with the complete headline as originally printed, so as to not cause any problems with re-posts or searches.
Are you talking 1970 or 2015?
If the problem fits in memory, then it can be solved in memory far faster than on disk. If not, then you need a strategy that takes the disparity of access times into account.
E.g., if the problem is sorting the donor file, then you need some sort of algorithm in which sorted subsets are written to disk, then read in and merged, written out again, until you end up with sorted output. Of course, if it's 2015, you just read in the damned file and sort it! Done!
In 2015, your laptop or your smartphone likely has way more RAM than a major glassed in, raised floor computer installation of the 1970's or 1980's had RAM plus disk.