What is seek time?

[cyberttc]

I found it on Hard disk and CD drive specification.

 

[millsy]

The amount of time it takes between the time that the CPU requests a file and the first byte of the file starts being sent to the CPU. Times between 10 and 20 milliseconds are common.

Lower is better

 

[SCSIRAID]

Access time for a drive is defined as seek time plus latency. The seek time is the amount of time from when the drive receives the command until the arm/actuator moves and the heads are on the data cylinder. Latency is the amount of time it takes for the sector to rotate to a point under the head where it can be read. The latency is statistically one half of a rotation (7200 rpm = 4.2mSec). Seek times can be spec'd statistically as the average of all possible distances or as one third of the max distance.

 

[ragiepew]

nice explanation SCSIRAID...