wipe disks/raid volume

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ni©
  • Start date Start date
N

Ni©

Hi,

I'm in search for information on howto completely wipe a raid 5 volume so
the contents would not be recoverable with any tool.

I assume that a ghost will be taken or some 'online' software program to be
able to restore the history/deleted files onto another system.
Apparantly there are tools to only wipe the empty space but on the other
hand, it seems that information can be restored from swapfiles so I don't
mind installing everything as long I'm sure that deleted information cannot
be recovered.

I just read an article where a guy states that it took him 12h to complete
one pass of a 13GB drive and that you need 7 passes so that would take .. a
month for +-120GB!?!
Does anyone know the effect of recreating the raid volume in terms of the
ability to recover wiped data afterwards?
As I cannot acces the raid volume from a bootdisk, I could wipe the disk one
by one disconnected from the raid controller but I don't know if this is the
best way.

Every piece of information/experience on this subject is very welcome!

N.
 
Hi,

I'm in search for information on howto completely wipe a raid 5 volume so
the contents would not be recoverable with any tool.
Click to expand...

It's handled the same as any single drive= Google for a tool
to do it.

I assume that a ghost will be taken or some 'online' software program to be
able to restore the history/deleted files onto another system.
Apparantly there are tools to only wipe the empty space but on the other
hand, it seems that information can be restored from swapfiles so I don't
mind installing everything as long I'm sure that deleted information cannot
be recovered.

I just read an article where a guy states that it took him 12h to complete
one pass of a 13GB drive
Click to expand...

Something is very wrong then, it takes nowhere near that
long to do a single pass.

and that you need 7 passes so that would take .. a
month for +-120GB!?!
Click to expand...

No, just start it at night and by the next morning it'll be
done.
Does anyone know the effect of recreating the raid volume in terms of the
ability to recover wiped data afterwards?
Click to expand...

Only recreating the RAID volume will have a very limited
usefulness. A typical end-user wouldn't be able to recover
it but any professional would.

As I cannot acces the raid volume from a bootdisk,
Click to expand...

Did you check on a DOS driver for this controller?
I could wipe the disk one
by one disconnected from the raid controller but I don't know if this is the
best way.
Click to expand...

That would work. "best" is up to you, do whatever, just
make sure it's a multipass random overwrite of all drives.

Every piece of information/experience on this subject is very welcome!
Click to expand...

You didn't even tell us if the RAID5 runs the operating
system or not. If not, just boot the OS and run a tool from
it. That would be faster than pulling each drive and doing
separately in DOS, and easier since you can start it up and
forget it till it's done.
 
Thanks a lot for your detailed answer kony!


kony said:
It's handled the same as any single drive= Google for a tool
to do it.



Something is very wrong then, it takes nowhere near that
long to do a single pass.



No, just start it at night and by the next morning it'll be
done.
Click to expand...

I've just ran the zero fill process from seagate - dos version; it took
about 10hrs for 1 disk and right now another program is doing a random
write.
Only recreating the RAID volume will have a very limited
usefulness. A typical end-user wouldn't be able to recover
it but any professional would.



Did you check on a DOS driver for this controller?
Click to expand...

Yes I did, only windows, linux and freebsd
That would work. "best" is up to you, do whatever, just
make sure it's a multipass random overwrite of all drives.



You didn't even tell us if the RAID5 runs the operating
system or not. If not, just boot the OS and run a tool from
it. That would be faster than pulling each drive and doing
separately in DOS, and easier since you can start it up and
forget it till it's done.
Click to expand...

The system had just 1 raid 5 volume with os and data on the same partition.
I could have added another disk, installed any os on it that is supported by
the raid controller and process the 3 drives/raid volume set together.Since
I have never done this zero-ing before or used these kind of tools, I went
for the 1 by 1 approach.
Apparantly the random write process is going much faster then zero-ing the
drive since it has already done 45% in 36 minutes.
Could it be that the zero fill the drive is so slow because it's a dos
program and the other is running under windows or is it something else?

Ni©
 
The system had just 1 raid 5 volume with os and data on the same partition.
I could have added another disk, installed any os on it that is supported by
the raid controller and process the 3 drives/raid volume set together.Since
I have never done this zero-ing before or used these kind of tools, I went
for the 1 by 1 approach.
Apparantly the random write process is going much faster then zero-ing the
drive since it has already done 45% in 36 minutes.
Could it be that the zero fill the drive is so slow because it's a dos
program and the other is running under windows or is it something else?
Click to expand...

Yes, writing zeros or anything else to a few hundred GB may
be very slow in dos. I'm still surprised it took 10 hours
though. BTW, you didn't necessarily need to zero it at all,
first... you could've just started out by random write
filling it.
 
Ni© said:
Hi,

I'm in search for information on howto completely wipe a raid 5 volume so
the contents would not be recoverable with any tool.

I assume that a ghost will be taken or some 'online' software program to
be able to restore the history/deleted files onto another system.
Apparantly there are tools to only wipe the empty space but on the other
hand, it seems that information can be restored from swapfiles so I don't
mind installing everything as long I'm sure that deleted information
cannot be recovered.

I just read an article where a guy states that it took him 12h to complete
one pass of a 13GB drive and that you need 7 passes so that would take ..
a month for +-120GB!?!
Does anyone know the effect of recreating the raid volume in terms of the
ability to recover wiped data afterwards?
As I cannot acces the raid volume from a bootdisk, I could wipe the disk
one by one disconnected from the raid controller but I don't know if this
is the best way.

Every piece of information/experience on this subject is very welcome!

N.
Click to expand...
You might want to check out Darick's Boot and Nuke program at
http://dban.sourceforge.net/. The program does not care what kind of raid
the drives might be formatted with before it erases them. As long as the
program can locate the interface and the drives directly it does the job.
So far it has erased every drive I turned it loose on with out complaint.

When you use the Boot CD (or use the floppy version) you make from the
download the program will seek out every hard drive attached to the
motherboard and erase it. You have a selection of erasure methods you can
pick from the startup menu.

Quick Erase,
Canadian RCMP TSSIT OPS-II Standard Wipe
American DoD 5220-22.M Standard Wipe
Gutmann Wipe
PRNG Stream Wipe

I volunteer at a youth center that receives donated machines, including
servers, from just about anywhere. Corporate as well as personal computers
with raid and other configurations. You would be surprised at what people
leave on those machines when I boot them for a look see (off line of
course).

Not knowing what might be on the drives, proprietary information, Trojans,
or a virus, I boot them with a copy of DBAN and set it to erase the drives
before anything else is done. Since some of the computers or individual
drives might be forwarded to other agencies or locations we don't want to
hear about anything that might have been left on the drives from a past
life. Using DBAN has eliminated possible problems in that area.

In your case, make sure you unplug the drive cable from any drive you want
to keep the data on before you boot the DBAN program.

One other thing I like is that the program is FREE.
 
Hi kony, thanks A LOT for your information on this subject and I've learned
something on top!

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer"
 
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