
The seek time depends on where the head is at the start of an operation and where it has to move to, and the latency depends on the position of the disk in its cycle, so for a given HDD it is normal to talk about average seek time and average latency.

How does Hard Drive Speed Work?Īn HDD is made up of a number of spinning magnetic platters that stores data, and a number of read/write heads on mechanical arms that move over the surface of the platters. Solid state drives have dramatically faster read and write speeds when compared with hard disk drives. To understand why there is a big difference between SSD v HDD speed, it’s necessary to consider the difference between SSD and HDD technology. That means that when it comes to choosing between SSD or HDD storage, SSDs would be preferably to HDDs in all cases if it weren’t for one fact: SSDs are more expensive than HDDs when measured by cost per Gigabyte of storage. Solid state drives (SSDs) are faster than conventional hard disk drives (HDDs) and they are also more reliable and use less power. In the market for the best SSDs? See our list of the best and fastest SSDs. Businesses are now focused on getting the best flash array. And with the significantly higher SSD speeds in contrast to HDD, the popularity of SSD storage, often known as ‘”flash,” is exploding. Today, though, the price differential has narrowed significantly.

However, historically the higher cost per Gigabyte of SSD storage meant that the benefits of higher SSD speeds were restricted to a few applications where the cost could be justified. HDD speed comparisons, SSDs clearly has the advantage.
