In a selective logical-volume swapping process, a subset of storage devices in a storage system are selected that represent good candidates for swaps that will improve system performance. Workload statistics are utilized from a number of sample intervals in a relatively long analysis interval. The workload statistics are aggregated over intermediate intervals of each analysis interval to yield a set of aggregated statistics much smaller than the set of workload statistics. Based on the aggregated statistics, a service processor searches for swaps of logical volumes, ranks the swaps according to expected system performance improvement, and selects source and target storage devices of the higher-ranked swaps. The service processor can then perform a full optimization analysis for this subset of storage devices utilizing the workload statistics from all the sample intervals. More efficient use of processing resources is achieved through the use of the smaller set of aggregated statistics to identify the subset of devices for which full analysis is performed.