Eraser of disks in ES40 servers and in Compaq RAID array

[Danesh Qureshi]

We are disposing three ES40 servers and a Compaq RAID array of 10 disks attached to one of the ES40's. All three servers are running Tru64 Unix V5.1B.

The three ES40 servers have local disks in them.

Please can some tell me what is the easiest, safest and quickest way to erase all the local disks and disks in the Compaq RAID array.

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

The terms easiest, safest and quickest don't necessarily go well together... !

Probably the easiest method is to use the Tru64 built in command zeero to wipe zeroes across the disks. Depending on your level of paranoia, that will probably suffice.

The safest (most secure) is to move the disks into an x86 based machine and use one of the free or commercial products to securely clear the data off the disks.

DBAN (www.dban.org) is free, and works, but offers no certification.

Other commercial products that you might want to look at are Kroll OnTrack Eraser (www.krollontrack.com/ontrack-eraser) or Blancco (www.blancco.com).

None of these products are quick...

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Martin Moore]

Within Tru64 UNIX, you can use /usr/lbin/zeero (yes, with two e's) to zero a disk. It has a man page. There's also the option of using scu to write various patterns over the disk; go into scu and do "help write" and then "media" at the subtopic prompt.

Martin