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June 13th, 2019 20:00
Fastest way to initialize all disks in an md3460
Hi folks,
We're decommissioning a bunch of drives on a bunch of md3460 arrays. Before removing them from the system, I'd like to initialize them so no data is left behind. I don't want to erase all settings on the array, just the drives. They are currently in stacks of RAID6 (8+2). Would the fastest way to initialize them all at once be to make a single Virtual Disk with a 60 element mirror and initialize that? Is there a faster method?
Cheers!
Scott
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DELL-Sam L
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June 14th, 2019 08:00
Hello Scott,
If you are just looking to wipe the data from the drives, then once you remove all DDP, VD, DG I would just create a raid 0 on all drives. That will ensure that the drives are erased.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
CanWoody
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June 16th, 2019 23:00
CanWoody
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August 25th, 2019 23:00
Hi again, all,
Just an update. Once we had some downtime, I repopulated the an MD3460 with the od drives, made a bunch of Disk Groups and Virtual Disks and set them to initialize. After 40 hours, it reported there were no operations in progress so I took the drives out, popped a few of them in to an MD1200 and had a look at the contents with"dd if=/dev/sdx |strings |less" to spot check them. They still contained user data. Fro this, I infer that a full VD initialization does not overwrite the contents. Is that true?
Cheers
Scott