I'm not sure if this sort of thing is allowed here or not, if its not let me know and I will erase this post, I went through some of the site policies and didnt see anything....
....Well we are on the look out for used LTO 2 media (thers as well but have a demand for LTO 2) We have been recycling tapes for a number of years now and have what I believe, the best solution to do so securely. We are an EPA Waste-Wise member – and want to be certain that waste materials from unwanted tapes are handled properly.
Below is an outline of our process. We can taylor this to fit your needs as well and issue a certificate of data destruction, any tapes that fail our process are physically destroyed.
1. Shipping Your Tapes: NSA has several options to help ensure the safe arrival of your tapes into our facility. These options include but are not limited to the following:
* Secure truck transport - point to point delivery with no stops or transfers.
* Locking Gaylord containers with GPS.
* FedEx White Glove service.
* Pick up and delivery by NSA personal service.
2. Receive Cartridges - Cartridges are received into our secure facility via inside loading bay. Tapes are held in our staging area, counted and scanned if required. We then store your tapes in a separate locked area until they are approved for processing. All tapes entering our facility will eventually be erased, degaussed or destroyed.
NSA’s secure facility means that there is no entry or exit without the proper security ID or an NSA.
escort
3. Verification – The audit of all scanned tapes is returned to you to ensure that no active tapes have been pulled. We hold tapes in our lock down area until confirmation is received and we are in 100% compliance.
4. External Processing - Tapes are now inspected for physical damage to ensure that only tapes in good physical condition move to the next step. We test for cracked seems, loose leader blocks and inspect for cracks and telling scratches or gouges.
The Tapes that we don't ship are as important as the tapes that we do.
5. Remove Labels and Clean – All external labels are removed and the entire surface of the cartridge is carefully cleaned and glue residue gently removed. Tapes are loaded on transport wagons and assigned a coded work order to keep dealer and end user identities secure. Tapes are transported into the designated area of the secure process room for certification. Tapes are mounted on the appropriate drive to begin the erase / certification.
6. Media Write Test - This process consists of a write pass over the entire length of the media (using large data blocks filled with a random bit-pattern) followed by a security erase pass. This process assures that all data has been erased and cannot be recovered. Soft and hard error information are collected for each piece of media and stored in the database. A good or a bad tape will be indicated, (PASS/FAIL), using new tape error performance criteria.
7. Read Test - Then a non-destructive read test gathers error statistics from the tape quality data. For each tape, soft read errors are logged by the certification program.
Results:
Tapes are sorted using binary decision criteria based on error performance standards. One critical error will fail a tape immediately. Every tape must meet or exceed new tape performance criteria. Individual testing means no defective tapes, so you can be sure back-ups will go smoothly.
8. Reformat – Tapes that pass the NSA Certification process are reformatted on original manufactures’ tape drives to ensure they are recognized as a blank tape. A tape mark may be used in place of, or in addition to, reformatting.
We are ready to write checks now to anyone who has a number of LTO 2 tapes, if you have other tapes we may also be interested as well.
....Well we are on the look out for used LTO 2 media (thers as well but have a demand for LTO 2) We have been recycling tapes for a number of years now and have what I believe, the best solution to do so securely. We are an EPA Waste-Wise member – and want to be certain that waste materials from unwanted tapes are handled properly.
Below is an outline of our process. We can taylor this to fit your needs as well and issue a certificate of data destruction, any tapes that fail our process are physically destroyed.
1. Shipping Your Tapes: NSA has several options to help ensure the safe arrival of your tapes into our facility. These options include but are not limited to the following:
* Secure truck transport - point to point delivery with no stops or transfers.
* Locking Gaylord containers with GPS.
* FedEx White Glove service.
* Pick up and delivery by NSA personal service.
2. Receive Cartridges - Cartridges are received into our secure facility via inside loading bay. Tapes are held in our staging area, counted and scanned if required. We then store your tapes in a separate locked area until they are approved for processing. All tapes entering our facility will eventually be erased, degaussed or destroyed.
NSA’s secure facility means that there is no entry or exit without the proper security ID or an NSA.
escort
3. Verification – The audit of all scanned tapes is returned to you to ensure that no active tapes have been pulled. We hold tapes in our lock down area until confirmation is received and we are in 100% compliance.
4. External Processing - Tapes are now inspected for physical damage to ensure that only tapes in good physical condition move to the next step. We test for cracked seems, loose leader blocks and inspect for cracks and telling scratches or gouges.
The Tapes that we don't ship are as important as the tapes that we do.
5. Remove Labels and Clean – All external labels are removed and the entire surface of the cartridge is carefully cleaned and glue residue gently removed. Tapes are loaded on transport wagons and assigned a coded work order to keep dealer and end user identities secure. Tapes are transported into the designated area of the secure process room for certification. Tapes are mounted on the appropriate drive to begin the erase / certification.
6. Media Write Test - This process consists of a write pass over the entire length of the media (using large data blocks filled with a random bit-pattern) followed by a security erase pass. This process assures that all data has been erased and cannot be recovered. Soft and hard error information are collected for each piece of media and stored in the database. A good or a bad tape will be indicated, (PASS/FAIL), using new tape error performance criteria.
7. Read Test - Then a non-destructive read test gathers error statistics from the tape quality data. For each tape, soft read errors are logged by the certification program.
Results:
Tapes are sorted using binary decision criteria based on error performance standards. One critical error will fail a tape immediately. Every tape must meet or exceed new tape performance criteria. Individual testing means no defective tapes, so you can be sure back-ups will go smoothly.
8. Reformat – Tapes that pass the NSA Certification process are reformatted on original manufactures’ tape drives to ensure they are recognized as a blank tape. A tape mark may be used in place of, or in addition to, reformatting.
We are ready to write checks now to anyone who has a number of LTO 2 tapes, if you have other tapes we may also be interested as well.
