Seek Time refers to how long it takes the read/ write head on a hard disk to move from one track to another. Technically, seek time is only one factor affecting “average” access time, and is not the same as access time. Because it sounds faster, certain disk vendors may try to woo you by quoting seek time specifications for their disks, but you should really base your comparisons on average access time.
Average Seek Time The SEEK TIME of a disk drive averaged over many different inter-track distances, which gives a good estimate of the typical time taken to locate a single piece of data. For a modern HARD DISK drive this time is under 10 milliseconds.
Track-to-Track Seek Time Also called the minimum seek time, the time that a disk drive takes to move its read/write head from one track to the next.
Full Stroke Seek Time Also called the MAXIMUM SEEK TIME, the time taken for a DISK DRIVE to move its head from the first track to the last track on a disk – that is, for a full stroke of the head-positioning mechanism.
Dinesh Thakur holds an B.C.A, MCDBA, MCSD certifications. Dinesh authors the hugely popular