What is the average seek time

The average seeking time in English is spelled average seek times, which is one of the most important parameters for understanding hard disk performance. It refers to the hard disk after receiving the system instructions, the head from the start to move to the data on the track to spend the average time, it reflects the ability of the hard disk to read data, is affecting the internal data transmission rate of the hard disk is an important parameter, the unit is milliseconds (ms). Different brands, different models of products, the average seek time is not the same, but the lower the time, the product is better, the current mainstream hard drive products average seek time in about 9ms.

The average seek time is actually a parameter which is decided by several factors such as rotational speed and single disc capacity. Generally speaking, the higher the speed of the hard disk, the lower the average seek time; the larger the single disc capacity, the lower the average seek time. When the capacity of the single disc increases, the seeking action and the moving distance of the head are reduced, which reduces the average seek time and accelerates the hard disk speed. Of course, in the market positioning and noise control and other aspects of consideration, manufacturers will also artificially adjust the average hard drive to seek time.

Data on the hard disk is divided into tracks, clustered storage, often read and write operations, often the data is not continuously arranged on the same track, so the head in reading data often need to move between the tracks, so the average seek time in the data transmission plays a very important role. The average seek time also plays a vital role in reading and writing large numbers of small files. When reading and writing large files or continuous storage of large amounts of data, the average seek time advantage is not reflected, at this time the size of the single disc capacity, speed, caching is a more important factor.