topic Re: Will INIT of a disk do a zero replace? in Operating System - OpenVMS

Will INIT of a disk do a zero replace?

Chaim Budnick — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:20:15 GMT

I need to INIT several data disks on an ALPHA machine which is changing ownership and the customer wants to be sure that the data which was originally on the disk cannot be restored under ANY circumstances. Will INIT insure thsi?

Chaim

Re: Will INIT of a disk do a zero replace?

Ian Miller. — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:26:26 GMT

INIT/ERASE is what you can do at VMS level. some people do it multiple times. Some use custom written erase patterns (there used to be a example DOD erase example in MACRO32 around).

Some people are only happy with physical destruction of the media in a furnace!

It depends on how particular the customer is. The commertial ones I've dealt with have wanted three runs of INIT/ERASE.

Re: Will INIT of a disk do a zero replace?

Jan van den Ende — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:43:56 GMT

Chaim,

maybe

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/browse_thread/thread/9ac350f609a388aa/ee0afc6f74d74f65#ee0afc6f74d74f65

gives some reasons why destruction is maybe even a GOOD option towards the recipients as well.

Modern disks are so (relatively) cheap, have so much more capacity, consume so much less power, that even for itself that would be quite a valid argument!

Proost.

Have one on me.

Jan

Re: Will INIT of a disk do a zero replace?

Craig A Berry — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 11:07:17 GMT

Look at

$ help analyze/media/exercise

Run it with /LOG so you get a message at the end with what it found, if anything. You can overwrite the disk with whatever pattern you want and of course run it as many times as you want depending on the local paranoia level. This has the added benefit of locating and flagging any bad blocks the disk may have. I would discourage the new customer from accepting used disks that have any bad blcoks at all since they may be an early sign of a more general failure.

If it's not convenient to do this from VMS, the console firmware and/or the storage array firmware (if applicable) may have something similar.

Re: Will INIT of a disk do a zero replace?

John Gillings — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 15:51:29 GMT

For the truly paranoid.

Note that INIT/ERASE will only erase blocks currently reachable from the sector map. It will not find any bad blocks that have been replaced. Although it's a very long shot, it's feasible those blocks could be read by someone determined enough...

Re: Will INIT of a disk do a zero replace?

Harry_65 — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 22:15:59 GMT

Chaim:
Sorry to use forum but can't figure out another way to reach you. What's your current email?
Harry Gross