Q What is sequential read speed?

A A measure of how quickly large files can be read from a device.

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Sequential read is a disk access pattern whereby large contiguous blocks of data are read from adjacent locations on the surface of a device. The term is used primarily within the context of benchmarking and the speed is usually measured in MBps. This type of access pattern is common when reading large files such as video, music and images. As a rule of thumb approximately 50% of a typical users disk access on a PC will consist of sequential reads and writes. Drives that are used primarily for large multimedia files or backups should have relatively high sequential read speeds. When manufacturers quote speeds for devices such as flash drives, hard drives and SSD's, unless specified otherwise, they are referring to the sequential speed. Other types of read speed include random 4k and deep queue depth.