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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
- Path: sparky!uunet!rayssd!m1b
- From: m1b@rayssd.ssd.ray.com (Barone)
- Subject: Declassification of disks and DEC
- Message-ID: <1992Jul21.174506.25517@rayssd.ssd.ray.com>
- Summary: Enhanced HSC Format Utility
- Keywords: complaint
- Organization: Raytheon Submarine Signal Division, Portsmouth, RI
- Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 17:45:06 GMT
- Lines: 59
-
- In April of this year, I purchased the "Enhanced HSC Format Utility",
- part number QA-926AB-H7, for $100 because we have many Winchester
- disk drives (RA82s) in a classified environment. What prompted me
- to buy it was the little blurb that stated, "This enhanced version
- provides the functionality to overwrite data in all user sectors
- (including revectored sectors) with user-specified patterns acceptable
- to the Department of Defense." (As the name of the product implies,
- the disks must be on an HSC (except the HSC50).)
-
- For those unfamiliar with classified work, whenever a Winchester
- disk is replaced, the platters must be removed and destroyed if one
- cannot overwrite every sector on the disk. In itself, this would
- be no big deal but DEC charges us $2800 for RA82s that are destroyed
- since they cannot refurbish them. Satisfying the Defense Investigative
- Services (DIS) with this formatter would save my company lots of money
- because we could declassify the disks and give them back to DEC. The
- fact that we still have many ancient RA82s which require FCOs to avoid
- failures added some urgency to the purchase.
-
- The regional DIS office requires that the procedure of writing a
- particular pattern in every block (except those in the Format Control
- Table) on the disk followed by random block dumps be performed three
- times. This requirement should be easily satisfied by using the new
- FORMAT program followed by the DKUTIL program.
-
- So we called DIS in for a demonstration of the product and we ran it.
- (It's tough to get disks just to play with so there could be no "dress
- rehearsals".) We received a successful completion status but the
- results were not what we expected or what was documented. It seems
- that the formatter will write all zeros to bad blocks rather than the
- specified pattern that we selected. It doesn't matter that the data
- is gone (we couldn't prove it, that block may have always contained
- zeros) -- what matters is that the pattern isn't what we specified.
- The demo was a failure.
-
- Talks with the SDI Controller Software Supervisor indicate that this
- is a feature and the formatter does conform with the 1989 Industrial
- Security Manual. Unfortunately, this manual has been superseded by
- the Government Declassification Specification of 1990.
-
- It seems to me that to change the formatter to write the specified
- pattern rather than zeros should be straightforward and easy but I
- had the impression that nothing would be done. The fact that it's
- advertised to "overwrite data in *all* user sectors (including
- revectored sectors) with user-specified patterns" indicates to me
- that it isn't doing what it's supposed to do.
-
- I might understand this stance if we were in a unique situation. But
- there must be hundreds of Digital customers who do classified work who
- have RA82s going bad. And each one must shell out $2800 each and every
- time that happens. I don't get it (except that it's a way of gouging
- the customer since you can get RA82s from Midwest for about $1500).
-
- Would SPRing it do any good? How do other companies deal with
- declassifying Winchesters?
- --
- Joe Barone
- m1b@rayssd.ssd.ray.com
- Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
-