From: Yoho, Cindy (cyoho@umpublishing.org)
Date: Mon Jun 26 2006 - 16:41:20 EDT
I got lots of helpful advice on this one, everything from some pretty nice scripts to recommendations to use a belt sander, hacksaw, sledge hammer or very hot fire. :-)
The 2 most common suggestions were
1. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/cxtxdx bs=512k (for every disk on the array). For this Steve Ilgen had a good suggestion, to destroy all the VA7410 LUNs first, and recreate just one big LUN. That way you only have one disk to write to, saving the hassle of creating a script with a bunch of smaller LUNs/disks in it. Ah, the beauty of Virtualization!
2. /bin/mediainit -v (although this came with caveats from nearly everyone who suggested it that it might render my disks permanently unusable)
I used #1, since we might like to resell the array or maybe even use it in another location for DR. Most said I would need to overwrite the drives at least 3 or 4 times or the data could still be recovered if someone was determined enough. Other interesting suggestions that I did not try but may next time included:
- Use prealloc to create a 2 GB file, then create symlinks to the file called file2, file3, file4, etc. Then use tar -chvf /dev/rdsk/cxtydz file*
to copy the files onto the drives. Make sure you have enough "files" to exceed the size of the disk.
- Use cvui, the CommandView interface, to format all the disks with one command. The format command is under "Diagnostics"
- Degauss the drives (may also render the disks permanently unusable)
- Run a big magnet over them (also renders them permanently unusable!)
- HP has component recycling
- There are vendors who specialize in destruction of data to mil-spec standards for the DOD.
Thanks to all who replied, as usual you were all very helpful (and entertaining :-)
Cindy
-----Original Message-----
From: hpux-admin-owner@DutchWorks.nl [mailto:hpux-admin-owner@DutchWorks.nl]On Behalf Of Yoho, Cindy
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 3:01 PM
To: hpux-admin@dutchworks.nl
Subject: [HPADM] erasing disks
Hi All,
What do you use to erase sensitive data when decommisioning disk drives? I have not had to do this but once before (we hang on to stuff!) and we just destroyed all the vgs and recreated them different sizes and using different physical volumes. Is there a low level formatting that I should use to be absolutely sure the data is no longer accessible? The drives are on a VA7410 direct attached to an rp7410 running HP-UX 11.11.
Thanks~
Cindy Yoho
United Methodist Publishing House
Nashville, Tennessee
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