Head seek
Updated: 09/15/2024 by Computer Hope
The term head seek refers to a measure of performance relating to a rotating hard drive. Head seek time is how long it takes for the disk drive head on the actuator arm to find the appropriate track to write or load information.
Once the hard drive receives a command to load or store data, the hard drive actuator arm guides the head to the appropriate track to find the correct sector. The head of the actuator arm then stores or reads data from that sector, depending on the command. Current rotating hard disk drives have an average head seek time of approximately nine milliseconds. However, the first hard disk drive had an average seek time of six hundred milliseconds in the late 1950s.