Buffer enables some applications such as stream videos to run smoothly even with high average latency, but it cannot protect us from high latency peaks.
Any words on average latency you've experienced?
Thus, for a 7200 RPM disk the average latency is 4.2 milliseconds.
For most magnetic media-based drives, the average rotational latency is typically based on the empirical relation that the average latency in milliseconds for such a drive is one-half the rotational period.
Boasting an average latency of 4.17 ms, the G-Technology GD420002TB speeds up the process of searching files and folders.
Average rotational latency is shown in the table below, based on the statistical relation that the average latency in milliseconds for such a drive is one-half the rotational period.
It may make sense to separate read latency and write latency, and in case of sequential access storage, minimum, maximum and average latency.
An average hard disk has an average rotational latency of 3ms, a seek-time of 5ms, and a transfer-time of 0.05 ms/page.
As long as most memory accesses are cached memory locations, the average latency of memory accesses will be closer to the cache latency than to the latency of main memory.
The Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB (WD6400AAKS) offers excellent performance with a 7200rpm spindle speed, 320GB/platter design, 4.2ms average latency, and a 3 year warranty.