rotational latency

<storage, hardware>

The time for the start of the required sector on a disk to appear underneath the read/write head. The worst case is where it has just passed the head when the request is received. For a disk drive with N heads per surface, rotating at R revolutions per minute, the average rotational latency will be 

 L = 30/NR seconds.
Rotational latency is one component of access time.

Last updated: 2009-11-06

Nearby terms:

rotary debugger ♦ rotational latency ♦ rotations per minute ♦ ROTFL

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