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[ The PC Guide | Systems and Components Reference Guide | Hard Disk Drives | Hard Disk Performance | Hard Disk Internal Performance Factors ]

Access Time

Positioning on a random read or write of the disk requires moving the heads to the correct cylinder and then waiting for the correct sector to rotate under the heads. These are measured by seek time and average latency respectively. It is also possible to combine these two figures into a composite number; this is called access time and is measured in milliseconds.

This metric is not used nearly as frequently as seek time for hard disks. It is much more commonly used in assessing CD-ROM drives and I discuss it in much more detail in that chapter.

Next: Head Switch Time


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