SUMMARY: Wiping clean tru64 disks

From: Ricardo \(Tru64 User\) (tru64user@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Sep 23 2005 - 11:36:24 EDT


Overwhelming responses.....Thanks to all (10++). After
quick check,it seems that i will try first
DBAN....then shred. They seem more special purpose,
but all others should work if procedures followed
carefully it seems.

Utils::
diskx
zeero (e.g. /usr/lbin/zeero -df /dev/rrz9c)
dd e.g.(dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/rdsk/<your disk>
bs=1024k conv=noerror)
scu (Has an erase option)

Longer Responses
___________________________________________________
Move the disk to an Intel PC with a SCSI-controller.
Buy Norton Ghost which includes a utility called
GDISK.
The GDISK can wipe disks completely, also at DOD
requirements.

A free tool is here: http://dban.sourceforge.net/
___________________________________________________

But you can also use 'shred' (from GNU coreutils).
You
can
give the number of passes there. It's based on Peter
Gutmann's paper
`Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State
Memory'.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html

_________________________________________________
This will erase the label and write a standard label
disklabel -z $DISK
disklabel -rw $DISK

Now you can just
dd if=/dev/zero of=$DISK bs=1024k

This may not work on the system disk, if you want to
clean it, boot
from
cdrom into sing user (boot -fl single CDROM)

One last word: If you are paranoid, you will not use
/dev/zero as
input.
There are special devices that can read a byte from a
harddrive after
it was
overwritten (with highly sensible heads). To increase
entropy you use a
file
with random input. On a linx box you create a gig of
plain garbage: dd
if=/dev/random of=random bs=1024k count=1024
Then you write this gabage to the target drive 2 or 3
times. Game over
now.
____________________________________________________
If you have the system exercisers loaded, the diskx
utility
(/usr/field/diskx) write test to the raw "c" partition
will
do a very good job. I'm thinking there is a utility
that
does much the same thing. It's all about how
thoroughly you
want the data scrubbed. Oh, by the way, most SCSI
disks can
just be told (e.g., with the "scu" utility) to to a
low-level
format on themselves and that scrups the disk pretty
clean
and takes no host CPU cycles to do it, so if you are
going to
do a lot of disks, you can just kick off the format on
each
of them and then go away. Telling the system disk to
format
itself will wipe it clean and the system will likely
panic.

HUMOROUS::
There is always a Microwave!

--- "Ricardo (Tru64 User)" <tru64user@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
> I have seen this discussion here before but dont
> remember the recommendation.
> I am about to decomission some alpha PWS
> XP1000's...and am wondering of the best method to
> cleanup the disks completely, external as well as
> internal.
> I am thinking along the lines of using "dd" at the
> moment...
> Any suggestions welcome.
>
> _Thanks
>
> Richard
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>

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