Access Time

Access time is the time taken by a computer to identify and read data from a storage component like the hard disk drive or the solid state disk. This time is usually stated in terms of nanoseconds or milliseconds and a lower access time is always favorable since it enables the system to attend to the requests made to it in the fastest time possible.

Some of the factors that can influence the access time include the kind of storage device used, the processing power of the computer, the available amount of RAM, and the general workload of the computer. A major way of increasing the performance of a computer is by increasing access time.

Access time is one of the key performance measures in computing since it determines the total rate of a system. The time taken to access the data is therefore very important in order to make the applications that require real time data processing such as gaming, video editing and large scale database management to run efficiently. In such a scenario, any reduction in the access time can result in tremendous improvement in the efficiency and hence the usability of the system.