Best Practices for tapes destruction

[Hayse Jeanton]

Hello all..
I wonder if you know of certain procedures for the destruction of backup tapes (LTO) or best practices for it. I have 2 libraries, an EML and an MSL, manages by Dataprotector, and for auditing issues i need to design a procedure for destroying the tapes to be discontinued.
Thanks all of you :)
HJ

[marsh_1]

hi,

i think most of the guidelines in this article should be of use :-

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=99369

hth

[Ralf Loehmann_2]

Hello Hayse,

I do not know about legal requirements. Tapes working the way that if you overwrite the beginning you should not be able to get to the data from the former writes, but the data is still on the tape. Specialist might be still able to read the data. There are a couple of ways, as already mentioned overwrite the complete tape a couple of times. Or for LTO Tape, since they are physically formatted use a bulk eraser. I am not sure how high the magnetic field needs to be to make the tapes useless. There might be a third way, encrypt the data on the media or use hard encryption. Nobody might be able to read the media without the keys. There are encryption routines, which might be good enough for the country regulations. The problem with encryption is that you really need a good way to keep your keys. I know there is software-based and LTO-4 encryption available for DP. There is a hardware encryption for the LTO-4 Tape drives available (http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/lto4Encryp/index.html ) other ways, for example for the newer MSLâ s (http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/en/WF05a/12169-304612-304622-304622-304622-3936307.html ). There is also an enterprise solution for key management available (http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/secure_key/index.html ). An EML LTO-4 Tape library would works with it.

Encryption would also secure any tape, which is stored offsite.
Regards,
Ralf.

[Storage expo]

The best and most secure way is to use a Bulk erasor. IT is a large Electro magnet that scrubs all the data on the whole tape. The benefit of doing it on an LTO tape is also that the procedure will remove all the servo tracks.
This company offer it as a guaranteed service.

http://www.tape-drive-repair.com/repair.html