topic Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk in Operating System - HP-UX

HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

Ken Rahaim — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 16:23:14 GMT

I need an HPUX utility or product that will let me permanently erase sensitive data for maximum security. Can anyone provide a suggestion or information on such a product? Thank you!
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KenR

Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

A. Clay Stephenson — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 16:28:08 GMT

Hi Ken:

The easiest method in UNIX is to write 0's to every byte on the drive. One method is this:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ bs=8000k

If you don't have a /dev/zero make one like this:

mknod /dev/zero c 3 0x000003
chmod 444 /dev/zero

It will supply an unlimited number of ASCII NUL's.

Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

Ian Dennison_1 — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 16:29:12 GMT

sledgehammer - quick, easy, convenient!

No points, please!

Share and Enjoy! Ian Dennison

Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

Ken Rahaim — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 16:48:54 GMT

Clay,

Will this process of writing zero's across the whole drive render it useless? We eventually intend to use these drives in a less sensitive environment.
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KenR

Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

Robert_Jewell — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:38:54 GMT

Wouldnt the mediainit command take care of that? Running mediainit -v /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx re-initializes the, uh, media, but does it render the data that was there unrecoverable? That I dont know.

-Bob

Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

harry d brown jr — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:47:56 GMT

Ken,

No, it will still be usable. Just the data will be zeroes!

live free or die
harry

Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

A. Clay Stephenson — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 18:02:38 GMT

Hi again:

No the drive will still be fully functional. You will need to do a new pvcreate or a fdisk\format if it is going to be used in one of those alien operating systems.

Re: HPUX Equivalent of Norton WipeDisk

Wodisch — Wed, 13 Feb 2002 23:19:51 GMT

Hello Ken,

Ian's answer is the only reliable one, I am afraid to say!

Data Recovery companies are able to restore data overwritten on the disk platters even after up to 20 overwrites, AFAIK...

So go for the hammer-approach, or do the "dd" or "mediainit" quite often (and hence taking a long, long time).
Oh, a huge electro-magnet might be useful - like they use on the crans at the "waste-metal-dumps" (metal-junkyards? you know, where the put old cars to a "rest", and lift them with electro-magents on a cran...).

Just my $0.02,
Wodisch