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Re: How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

 
Lyndon Handy
Frequent Advisor

How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

We have an VA7400 that is being redeployed to another site. We need to ensure that all data has been erased/wiped from the configuration.

What is the best method? Delete all the LUN's and shuffle the drives? Or is there a re-initialization command feature?

Thanks,

Lyndon
"tried and true instead of new and improved"
6 REPLIES 6
Bernhard Mueller
Honored Contributor

Re: How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

Lyndon,

run
armfmt -f

Regards,
Bernhard
Peter Mattei
Honored Contributor

Re: How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

Best is to use the armfmt command.
This will reformat the whole array.
Finde the command description on page 144 in this manual http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/CoreRedirect.jsp?targetPage=http%3A%2F%2Fh200001.www2.hp.com%2Fbc%2Fdocs%2Fsupport%2FSupportManual%2Fc00065956%2Fc00065956.pdf

Cheers
Peter
I love storage
Naveej.K.A
Honored Contributor

Re: How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

Hi lyndon,

connect to the va7400 using the serial cable and hyperterm and use the vfpfmt to format the array.

Regards
naveej
practice makes a man perfect!!!
Lyndon Handy
Frequent Advisor

Re: How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

Thanks for the rapid responses!
What is the difference between the two options provided?
I will try one of the recommended commands.

Lyndon
"tried and true instead of new and improved"
Bernhard Mueller
Honored Contributor

Re: How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

Lyndon,

armfmt requires a host which sees the VA and which is running CommandView SDM.

If you have the VA not attached to a SAN or a host, you need to connect to it through the serial port.

The fmt (format) command is the same whether issued through "Virtual Front Panel" or "ARray Manager".

Regards
Bernhard
Roger Buckthal_2
Frequent Advisor

Re: How to erase/wipe a VA7400 (all disks)?

Format does not actually format the disks. It just clears the internal maps.

The data is basically scrambled on the disks anyway. I know of no one who as successfully been able to recover data from an array who├в s LUNs have been deleted. But, it├в s possible. The array stores data in 256K chucks. At that level the data is usable, if you can find where the next 256K chunk is! But, you must take the disk out of the array to read it. It├в s formatted to 520 byte sectors, so it├в s a trick to use it on most systems!

Within the array, you cannot read from a 256K chunk that you have not written to. So, you can├в t just create a LUN and start reading ├в you├в ll just get the format pattern. But, you can write a single sector 512 bytes, and then read the whole 256K chunk!

So, if you├в re really paranoid, create a single LUN of the whole available capacity, and then write