Wiping Disks

[Root Boy Jim]

	Unix-wizards,
	
	My organization (the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science) is selling
	some of its VAX 11/750s with rk07 drives.  Since the packs have unix
	software on them, I need (for legal reasons) to wipe them before we
	sell them.  I thought that reformatting them would be a good way of
	doing that (newfs only rewrites the superblocks, leaving the data).  
	
True, but in random and pretty much worthless order.
	
	I read the manpage for format(8), but it is sketchy, and only deals
	with the 780.  Could someone send me or post the proper sequence
	for doing this with a 750? 
	I have a tape (which was given me when I got this
	job; I don't know who had it before me) which is labelled
	"boot/copy/format"; I assume this is probably the right thing to use.
	
	Also, please tell me if I'm being an idiot and putting myself to a lot
	of unnecessary work;  any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

I'll be kind and only state that you are doing it the hard way. Any means
of overwriting data will be useful. There are several ways to do this.

The simplest way is probably `yes | dd of=/dev/rhk1c bs=8k'. For the
last pack, find out how to boot copy and copy hk1c to hk0c. If you can't
do that, rm almost everything, then do `tr -d A-z < /vmunix > trash' to
get a meaningless but large file. Copy it to different places until you
fill up the disk. Then copy it to /vmunix and /boot. If this pack is
useful to anyone by this time, they must be clairvoyant.

	Thanks,
		SWA
	
	(Root Boy) Jim Cottrell		<rbj at icst-cmr.arpa>

P.S. Zippy is temporarily out of commission.