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Access time is the metric that represents the composite of all the other specifications reflecting random performance positioning in the hard disk. As such, it is the best figure for assessing overall positioning performance, and you'd expect it to be the specification most used by hard disk manufacturers and enthusiasts alike. Depending on your level of cynicism then, you will either be very surprised or not surprised much at all, to learn that it is rarely even discussed. Ironically, in the world of CD-ROMs and other optical storage it is the figure that is universally used for comparing positioning speed. I am really not sure why this discrepancy exists.
Perhaps the problem is that access time is really a derived figure, comprised of the other positioning performance specifications. The most common definition is:
Access Time = Command Overhead Time + Seek Time + Settle Time + Latency
The speed with which data can be transmitted from one device to another. Data rates are often measured in megabits (million bits) or megabytes (million bytes) per second. These are usually abbreviated as Mbps and MBps, respectively.