Re: A non-sun user with a stupid question

From: Anthony Mandic (of_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/29/03 

Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:16:12 +1000

Nich Wisland wrote:
>
> My company recently aquired a pair of Sun Ultra 5000's (along with a
> Sun mass storage unit). We are a reseller of surplus and used
> electronics, but our focus is on 100% data destruction. The two
> solutions to these issues we've found are 1) sell withoud drive array
> and 2) wipe drives individually outside of the units. Obviously, if
> there's an alternative, we'd prefer that. Not being a Sun user, I'm
> unfamiliar with utilites that allow for data destruction. Our usual
> practice involves a wipe program that re-writes every sector of the
> disk (thus deleting partition tables as well). Does anything like
> this exist for a Sun array purpose?

        You don't mention what kind of disks they are. Since its an
        old system, I'll bet SCSI but they might be fiberchannel.
        You may not be able to pull these and put them into a PC
        for the rewrite.

        Given the nature of magnetic residue, wiping them via an
        overwrite isn't totally effective but a sample method or
        two has been offered. You could also try checking the Sun
        hardware newsgroup or other tips (I've seen suggestions
        from total destruction to the use of magnets).

        If you do it via Solaris, I'd change the partition layout
        afterwards and write something else to them again as well
        as swapping the disks around in the array enclosure. If
        someone still manages to read them, the swapping adds an
        extra layer to the decoding (assuming the original data was
        striped across disks).

-am © 2003