Easiest and Quickest way to clear/empty out rootvg

[TG1]

We're planning to take 11 SP-AIX nodes down and surplus them. I need to wipe away all data on the internal disks including the O/S. Each node has 2 disks which are mirrored for rootvg. What is the easiest & quickest way to get this accomplished? All nodes are running AIX 4.3.3.8

 

[p5wizard]

Depends on how sensitive the information stored on the disks is (and how paranoid your boss is ...)

You might just want to unmirror rootvg and reinstall the nodes, then after a node reboots, add the other disk to the rootvg, create and mount one filesystem with all the PPs of the added disk, and just write random information to the filesystem and erase and write and erase and write..., then remove the filesystem. If you then migrate the system FSs from one disk to the other and do the same again (crfs, mount, write, read, write, read, ...) you should be reasonably safe.

Reformatting the drives (from diagnostics boot - task selection - format media) is also an option, but it doesn't really erase the disks, just makes it really really hard to get at the data. But somebody with a lot of money (and a special lab) might still be able to find bits of information on the disks...

You could also take the disks out of the nodes and put them in another machine so you can 'erase' (see earlier) them without having to reinstall each node...

You can also run them over with a steamroller instead of preparing them and trying to sell 'em.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[BobMCT]

I believe you can do the following:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/hd? where ? is the hd number. This should write zeroes over the entire logical disk. You could also try using other of= devices such as hdisk0, etc.

 

[CrystalWizard]

do an overwrite install of aix 4.3.3. that'll wipe the entire disk and leave a virgin, base level os on it with nothing else. Make sure it's an overwrite though, not a preservaction install or anything else.