.
IF you are located in Illinois, by state law, you must either erase or
degauss TEN (10) times. This makes it impractical from a labor
standpoint. Physical destruction is really the only option, which we are
currently considering as we do a technology update with a 595-cartridge
tape library used with TSM.

We may wind up buying a chipper machine, that reduces tapes and disk
drives to shreds. (Actually sounds like fun, and is probably accompanied
by lots of great noise. I think that destroying data in this manner will
wind up being pleasureable.)

The only tape format that can be degaussed and then reused is the DLT
family, which has now been end-of-lifed by its main supporter, Quantum.
(But still, by law you'd have to do it 10 times if you're in Illinois.)

Roger Deschner      University of Illinois at Chicago     rogerd AT uic DOT edu
"No one may throw an old computer across the street at their neighbor."
-- city ordinance, Warsaw, Indiana


On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Curtis Preston wrote:

>The erase function takes too long per tape to be used in bulk.
>
>---
>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: Friday, December 14, 2007 8:27 AM
>To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
>Subject: 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
>