Solid-State Drives Put to the (Scooter) Test

As if it is anything to brag about, the ARMOR X10 Rugged Tablet PC from DRS Technologies survived the Tecate SCORE International Baja 500 motorcycle race, supposedly one of the most punishing man-and-machine tests in the world. The race starts and finishes in downtown Ensenada, Mexico, and stretches through more than 400 miles of desert.

Big deal. If you want to see a real 2-wheel man-and-machine test of skill and endurance, just watch me zip by on my motor scooter, heading for Henry's coffee shop for my mid-afternoon caffine fix. Desert, smesert. I weave in and out of pot holes, mud puddles, and dead squirrels at a breakneck speed. Breakneck for scooters, anyway.

What I don't have, of course, is a ARMOR X10 Rugged Tablet PC with an Intel SATA II (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) solid-state drive mounted on my motor scooter. In the Baja race, an Intel team mounted the ruggedized PC on a Honda CRF450X motorcycle and left it running for the 11-hour duration of the grueling race. The test was proposed by Intel's Troy Winslow, an accomplished "weekend" motorcycle racer. Troy explains that "In this particular test we were doing a proof-of-concept for withstanding shock and vibration. We wanted to show that the unit was running throughout the race and could withstand severe shock and vibration. In our view, it was mission accomplished."

Except for the ruggedized chassis and housing, the ARMOR X10 is a fairly standard machine: 1.2-Ghz dual-core processor, 512 MB RAM, 16-GB solid-state hard drive, 10.4-inch LCD, touchscreen display, 4-6 hours of battery life, and it weights just over 5 pounds. While the ARMOR X10 sports a 16-GB solid-start hard drive, Intel does provide 32GB and 64GB versions of the X25-E Extreme SATA solid-state drive in the standard 2.5-inch hard-drive form factor. It goes 2 million hours mean time before failure and has a sustained sequential read of up to 250 MB/s and sustained sequential write of up to 170 MB/s. If you haven't been able to check out the emerging class of solid-state drives, do so. They're quiet, fast, and forget about cooling requirements.

And if DRS and Intel want to put an ARMOR X10 through a real acid test, let's strap one on my scooter and see how long it lasts. Now that would be something to brag about.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 05:32 PM  Permalink