Maximum seek time measures the worst-case mechanical delay in a hard disk drive. It is the time required for the actuator arm to sweep the read and write head across the entire width of the physical platters. Engineers use this metric to calculate the absolute worst-case latency for a random read operation.
Heard on the job
The vendor specs show an average seek time of 4 milliseconds, but the maximum seek time is closer to 12 milliseconds.
Also heard as
- full-stroke seek time
Related terms
Seek time
The duration required for a hard drive's read/write head to move to the correct track on the disk platter.
Average seek time
The typical time it takes a hard drive actuator arm to position the read and write head over a requested data track.
Latency
The time it takes for a packet of data to travel from its source to its destination.