seek time

Seek time refers to the duration a hard drive’s read/write head takes to move to the specific location on the disk where data is stored. Imagine it like a librarian locating the right book on a shelf; the seek time is how long it takes to find the book before you can read or write in it. Faster seek times mean quicker access to data. It’s an important factor in overall hard drive performance, especially when retrieving data from different locations on the disk frequently.