spin up

spin up (third-person singular simple present spins up, present participle spinning up, simple past and past participle spun up)

1. (computing, intransitive, of a disk drive) To reach a sufficient spinning speed for reads and writes to take place.
   • 1987, PC: The Independent Guide to IBM Personal Computers (volume 6, page 222)

     Plated hard disk surfaces are actually harder and more scratch resistant than read-write heads are. The hard magnetic medium effectively protects itself from head crashes caused by contaminants and the drive's spinning up or down.

   • 2005, R. T. Stone, The Journals Book II: Into the Gulf (page 28)

     The hard drive spun up. The gray screen flickered. The smiley Mac face appeared and soon I was ready to dazzle the world with The Journals Book II.

2. (computing, transitive) To power up, launch, or instantiate.

   We spun up a virtual server in the cloud to handle the additional load.

• spin down

• pin-ups, pinups