Subject

    Computer Science

    Topic

    Computer Hardware

    In a hard drive's specifications, what does 'seek time' refer to?

    a)
    The time it takes for the drive to spin up from a complete stop.
    b)
    The time it takes for the read/write head to move to the correct track on the platter.
    c)
    The time it takes for the desired sector to rotate under the read/write head.
    d)
    The rate at which data can be transferred from the platter to the system.

    Explanation

    Seek time is one of the main components of a hard drive's latency and a key measure of its performance for random access. The other major component is 'rotational latency', which is the time it takes for the correct sector to spin into position. Total access time is roughly seek time + rotational latency.

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