IBM R/S6000 7012 300 Series Operator's Manual page 81

The Erase Disk service aid has not been certified as meeting the Department of Defense
or any other organizations security guidelines. The following steps should be followed if
the data on the drive is to be overwritten:
1. Use the "Erase Disk" selection to overwrite the data on the drive.
2. Do a format without certify.
3. Run a second pass of the erase disk selection.
For a newly installed drive, you can insure that all blocks on the drive are overwritten
with your pattern if you use the following procedure:
1. Format the drive.
2. Check the defect map by running the Erase Disk selection.
Note: If you use the "Format and Certify" option, there may be some blocks which get
placed into the grown defect MAP.
3. If there are bad blocks in the defect MAP, record the information presented and ensure
that this information is kept with the drive. This data is used later when the drive is to be
overwritten.
4. Use the drive as you would normally.
5. When the drive is no longer needed and is to be erased, run the same version of the
Erase Disk Service Aid which was used in step 2.
Note: Using the same version of the service aid is only critical if there were any bad blocks
found in step 3.
6. Compare the bad blocks which were recorded with the drive in step 3 with those which
now appear in the grown defect MAP.
Note: If there are differences between the saved data and the newly obtained data, then all
sectors on this drive cannot be overwritten. The new bad blocks are not overwritten.
7. If the bad block list is the same, continue running the service aid to overwrite the disk
with the chosen pattern(s).
Diskette Format
This selection writes patterns to a diskette. Diskette format support was added in Version
4.2
This task may be run directly from the AIX command line. The following usage statement
describes the syntax of the command:
diag –c –d <deviceName> –T "format [–s* fmtcert | erase –a {read | write}] [–F]"
Flags
fmtcert formats and certifies the disk.
* available in no–console mode only.
–F Force flag. Forces disk erasure even if all blocks cannot be erased due to
errors accessing grown defect map.
Note: Erase option in command line mode uses default values. To selectively read or write,
use diag in console mode.
Introduction to Tasks and Service Aids
4-5