Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!xylogics!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Panic button SCSI disk reformat!
Message-ID: <1989Oct29.232707.4810@world.std.com>
Date: 29 Oct 89 23:27:07 GMT
References: <1989Oct27.222806.28576@genisco.uucp>
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
Lines: 26
In-reply-to: dav@genisco.uucp's message of 27 Oct 89 22:28:06 GMT


>Have I missed any solutions?  Does anyone have something like this
>in place?  Please mail ideas.  I will summarize if there is any
>interest.
>
>	David L. Markowitz

Such things do exist in high-security applications.

Why not degauss the sucker? A suitable degausser could probably be put
right into the shoebox/rack. It wouldn't be immediately reusable I
don't think but it should be completely recoverable, probably after a
brief trip back to the manufacturer. Maybe it can be reformatted
later, I'm just not certain.

At least this would work in a fraction of a second and can be made
complete and certain. The downside is it would also erase any magnetic
media within a certain (calculable) distance of the degausser and
possible other side effects tho all pretty predictable and probably
not hard to prepare for (keep magnetic media out of the area that you
don't want degaussed or set up shielding.)
-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die, Purveyors to the Trade         | bzs@world.std.com
1330 Beacon St, Brookline, MA 02146, (617) 739-0202 | {xylogics,uunet}world!bzs