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Disk seek performance characteristics

In computer systems, there is a significant disparity in data access speeds between different types of memory and storage mediums. Moving data across a network is approximately 100 times slower than accessing it from memory^[600-developer-principle-cache.md].

When analyzing hard disk performance specifically, a critical performance bottleneck is the mechanical movement of the disk head. The time required to perform a single disk seek is approximately twice as long as the time required to read 1 MB of data^[600-developer-principle-cache.md].

Sources

^[600-developer-principle-cache.md]