rotational latency

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.

Nearby terms:
Roskind grammars « rot13 « rotary debugger « rotational latency » rotations per minute » ROTFL » ROTFLMAO