access time
noun/ˈaksɛsˌtʌɪm/
Etymology First attested in 1948.
1
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences The time interval between the issuing of a request to read data from or write data to a storage device and the completion of this action.
- Random access files have a fast access time, but they cannot easily produce sequential lists.1986, Roger R Flynn, An Introduction to Information Science:
2
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences An item of metadata indicating when a file was last accessed.
- It is difficult to monitor both the access time and the change time, because monitoring the file attributes resets the access time […]2005, Brian Wotring, Bruce Potter, Marcus J Ranum, Rainer Wichmann, Host Integrity Monitoring Using Osiris and Samhain:
- Derived terms
- average access time, disk access time