Hard Drive Access Time

Hard Drive Latency

Mechanical latencies, measured in milliseconds, include both seek time and rotational latency. "Seek Time" is measured defines the amount of time it takes a hard drive's read/write head to find the physical location of a piece of data on the disk. "Latency" is the average time for the sector being accessed to rotate into position under a head, after a completed seek. It is easily calculated from the spindle speed, being the time for half a rotation. A drive's "average access time" is the interval between the time a request for data is made by the system and the time the data is available from the drive. Access time includes the actual seek time, rotational latency, and command processing overhead time.

Collected From: http://www.pctechguide.com/31HardDisk_Performance.htm