Question

The time taken to move the disk arm to the desired cylinder is called the :

a) positioning time
b) random access time
c) seek time
d) rotational latency

Answer 1

The time taken to move the disk arm to the desired cylinder is known as 'seek time', which contributes to a disk drive's overall performance.

Step-by-step explanation:

The time taken to move the disk arm to the desired cylinder is called the seek time. Seek time is a measure of how long it takes for the disk drive to move the read/write head to the track where the data is stored. It is one of several components that determine the performance of a disk drive, including random access time and rotational latency.

Random access time is the sum of the seek time and the rotational latency. While seek time refers to the movement to the correct track or cylinder, rotational latency refers to the time waiting for the disk to rotate to the correct position where the data can be read or written. Random access time gives an overall measure of how quickly a system can retrieve data from a disk.