dod formatting

[Jon Steele]

Hi,

Does anyone know the command to use to format drives in an HP 9000 machine,the way the dod wants it.I know they want you to use a certian command to format their drives to make sure everything is erased.I was hoping someone would know the command that the dod wants you to use.

Thank You
Jon

[GrayMatter_1 · Accepted solution]

i'm not sure what the equiv would be on hp-ux for /dev/rand, but on our linux servers we run dd to copy /dev/rand to the disk 7 times per disk before we let them go.

HTH

[Phil uk]

Jon,

Not really sure what "dod" is, but i can see that you need to erase your disks.
Try:
cat /dev/zero | dd bs=64k of=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ
(your disk dev file cXtYd0)

Which will write all zeros over the disc and then if needed use:

cat /dev/zero | tr '\0' '\377' | dd bs=64k of=/dev/rdsk/cXtYdZ

By changing the 377 you can write any patten of ones and zeros you like.

Let us know,
Cheers,
Phil

[Andrew Rutter]

hi jon,

I think you really need a combination of both the above answers.

The DOD standards are 5220.22-M and are quite vigourous and just one command isnt sufficient for this.

More details of the process needed can be found here

http://www.guard-privacy-and-online-security.com/how-clean-off-the-hard-drive.html#The

http://www.killdisk.com/dod.htm

but basically you need to write all zero's then all 1's and then all random charactors across the whole disk, for the most basic of the standard. The more sensitive the data the more this has to be done.

However, HP have there own strong random number generator you could use, but not sure this is enough either on its own.

http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=KRNG11I

The best thing would be to write a script that includes this and the others, and run numerous times

Either that or purchase a dedicated program to use which is certified to the standard

Andy

[GrayMatter_1]

I agree with Andy. Many years ago, back in the day of dos and windows 3.1, the DOD had a 3.5" disk image for download on their site that you could boot from and all it did was write 0's over the entire disk a few times. back then for a 200mb drive it still took a couple of hrs. depending on how sensitive your data is, you should overwrite the drive will all of the above... and then melt it down... and even then they could probably still get the last string you wrote to it! LOL

[Stan Sieler]

you might also consider checking out
our WipeDisk product:

http://www.allegro.com/products/hp9000/wipedisk.html

Which does various kinds of disk wiping/erasing, including some to meet various
DoD, HIPAA, and some other people's requirements.


Stan Sieler
sieler@allegro.com

[Amit Parui]

Hi,

Donno' wht 'dod' actually means but to format a disk u can use -

#mediainit

[GrayMatter_1]

DOD is 'Department of Defense'

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Jon,

If you can hook the drives up to something x86 based, then take a look at DBAN http://www.dban.org

That will allow you to wipe drives to a variety of different standards, and best of all its free...

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Jon Steele]

Thank you all for your help.
Jon