Securely erase Hard Disk drives

[Chum]

Is there a bootable CD which has software where I can erase the contents of all the hard drives in a Proliant DL380 G3/G4 & G5. I have tried DBAN (Darik's Boot & Nuke) However it doesn't recognise the RAID controller so it can't find any hard drives. I have also tried a demo of Wipedrive, and that too doesn't recognise any drives. I don't want to simply format the drives or just erase the RAID information, as I don't believe that is a secure enough way to eliminate the data on the disks.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hi, well one thing you could do I guess then is to load an OS that is supported.

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/km/product/390828/hpe-proliant-dl380-g3-server?ismnp=0&l5oid=316529#t=DriversandSoftware&sort=relevancy&layout=table&numberOfResults=25&f:@kmswtargetproductenvironmentlatest=[390828_Red%20Hat%20Enterprise%20Linux%205%20Server%20(x86)]

For example Red Hat 5 

Maybe this can even be loaded as a livecd? Guess you just need to put the drivers for the storage controller on the disc. Drivers for that can be found in the link above.

And then from within linux I bet there are applications for Linux to properly eraze all the contents on a disk.

Maybe the softwares you tried above are based in Red Hat? Then maybe the drivers for Red Hat in the link above can be put on the disc and then the program will work?

[Note: broken link updated/removed by Mod]

[Chum]

Thanks Johan, but I am after something a bit simpler. A boot disk like DBAN that recognizes DL380 raid controllers.

Surely I'm not the first person wanting to wipe hdds on a HP DL380 and HP must have something that can do this.

[wobbe]

http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml

I use the free version of killdisk.

[Nicholas Craib]

You need to use an older version of DBAN. Version 1.0.7 which is available here http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/files/dban/dban-1.0.7/ will wipe the drives for you.

[Chum]

I have since found something. Although not free, it is relatively inexpensive. It's called Active@ Killdisk and it recognises the RAID controllers in DL380/360 G3s and G4s. It provides a secure way to wipe all drives - including DoD 5220.22M method for securely erasing data
http://www.killdisk.com/

Thanks all for your help.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Cool!

Thanks for getting back after all this time :)

[Schly]

Really appreciate this piece of advice. 4+ years later and this is exactly what I needed to wipe some old servers running Novell.

DBAN 1.07 did the trick when the newer version failed to identify the RAID.

[Torsten.]

By the way, newer smart array controllers have this as an option in Intelligence Provisioning, strating with Proliant Gen8 servers.

[techneck]

I just used the secure erase option in Intelligence Provisioning and it says it erased 25 146GB drives in less than a minute, is this normal ? Just wondering if it really erased them ? I'm now running boot and nuke and it says it will take 2 hours and twenty minutes to finish. Anybody have any experience with Intelligence Provisioning secure erase ?

[techneck]

follow up.... the drive have to be configured in a logical volume before they can be erased