Wiping failed disks before warranty replacement

[Steve Krengel]

On occasion disks will fail and we typically return them to HP for replacement.

Can anyone recommend a product/procedure for wiping a FAILED disk clean before sending it back to HP for warranty replacement?

Thanks!

[Eugeny Brychkov]

I know there's a special option for HP (contractual) customers by which customer receives new disk but do not return defective. It will cost more than when returning bad disk, but your information will be with you
Eugeny

[William Lara]

mediainit can be used to reformat the drive, and destroy your data. But of course, if the disk doesn't work at all or is in real bad shape then it's not an option. It might be worth a try?

[Dave Unverhau_1]

Steve,

Eugeny's right. If the disk is failed, it's not going to be responding correctly to commands from a controller, so you can't be assured that what you do will make the data any more inaccessible than the failure makes it.

The only way to be absolutely sure that no one could see your data if you can't control the disk is to physically destroy it. This is the reasoning behind the media retention option that Eugeny mentions.

This option must be specified on the service contract when purchased/renewed (option R01 when I last checked). It usually adds about 20% to the monthly maintenance cost of any drive with this option, and needs to be specified for each drive that you would need to retain. You might prefer to skip the option and plan on paying for a new drive if you need to keep one.

Regards,

Dave

[Edward Finneran]

Another option is to install a degausser that can erase the entire drive magnetically before the CE takes it away. The bonuses are that it would work on drives from all manufacturers, and even work on drives that are not currently functional.