Average seek time is a mechanical performance metric for hard disk drives, calculated by averaging the duration of all possible head movements across the platters. It represents the delay incurred just to physically reach the data location, excluding the time waiting for the disk to spin or the actual data transfer. Enterprise drives use smaller platters and stronger actuators to minimize this delay.
The manufacturer specs the average seek time at four milliseconds, but under heavy random I/O, it feels much slower.
Related terms
Average access time
The typical delay between a processor requesting data and the storage device delivering it.
Maximum seek time
The longest possible delay for a disk drive head to move between the innermost and outermost tracks.
Seek time
The duration required for a hard drive's read/write head to move to the correct track on the disk platter.