Re: [ADSM-L] Any market for used tape media?

Curtis,
        3590 tapes are where IBM servo tracks were first invented
(unless it was 3570, I may be mistaken).  3592 and LTO are follow-on
technologies built from those first ones.
        De-guassing shouldn't be the only way this could be done.  It
ought to be possible to write multiple passes of bit-patterns to a tape,
making the old data unreadable.
        If you look at the "tapeutil" utility IBM provides with the
atape drivers, it includes an erase function.  It would be easy to write
a program to mount the tapes in a drive one at a time to erase them.
But I could not find any documentation online that really explained what
the erase function was doing, and if it was thorough enough to withstand
HIPAA requirements.

Best Regards,

John D. Schneider
Lead Systems Administrator - Storage
Sisters of Mercy Health Systems
3637 South Geyer Road
St. Louis, MO  63127
Phone: 314-364-3150
Cell: 314-486-2359
Email:  John.Schneider AT Mercy DOT net


-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Curtis Preston
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 2:19 AM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Any market for used tape media?


De-gaussing is the only practical way to erase a significant quantity of
tapes, and degaussing will render a number of modern tape formats
useless forever.  One of them is LTO.  Not sure about 3x9x.  (It's
because, in addition to removing the data, degaussing also removes the
servo tracks on the tape, and the drive won't recognize the tape.)

My opinion:  It's not worth the risk.

---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies 

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of
Schneider, John
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 1:28 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: [ADSM-L] Any market for used tape media?

Greetings,
        We have thousands of 3590, 3592, and LTO tapes which are about
to be decommissioned when their tape libraries are replaced. Some of the
3592 and LTO tapes are only 1-2 years old. Is there any market for used
tape media? And if so, do any of you know of a way to sufficiently erase
them so that they can be sold without security concerns about releasing
data?


Best Regards,

John D. Schneider
Lead Systems Administrator - Storage
Sisters of Mercy Health Systems
3637 South Geyer Road
St. Louis, MO  63127
Phone: 314-364-3150
Cell: 314-486-2359
Email:  John.Schneider AT Mercy DOT net