I agree and should have been more precise. Most algorithm and data structure texts fail to deal with the issues surrounding secondary-storage application, including optimizing disk accesses, buffering, etc.
Here is an example, you can usually increase DB performance by about 15% by not allocating the first 8 MB of your hard drive. (Hint: the partition table causes misaligned reads/writes on raid systems if your partition starts at sector 1)
If you want to see the tricks of the trade, go read the TPC results, find the auditor's report and look through the source, the hardware configuration, and the software configuration.