Loose Hard Drives

Challenge

A large data center was continually replacing their hard drives prior to disk failure. The data center did this preemptively using a predictive process called Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF). Every day a large number of loose drives were replaced and then needed to be wiped. It was too labor intensive and took too long to individually connect each of these drives to computers or USB ports to be wiped. This process created a backlog of un-wiped hard drives. This was not only inefficient but also a security risk.

Solution

Using WhiteCanyon’s WipeStation, a hardware appliance running a specialized version of WipeDrive allowed the employees to simply insert the loose drive into each of the drive bays and the system would automatically begin wiping the drive. While the employee attended to other tasks, WipeStation keeps track of the progress of each drive. When each drive is wiped and verified it automatically creates and sends a log file (audit trail) to a user specified destination. Then the individual drive can be removed and WipeStation is immediately ready for another drive to be inserted.

Results

This flexible solution allowed data center employees the ability to begin the wiping process whenever they had time and then process the overwritten drives on their own schedule. This resulted in significantly less labor to wipe the drives, increased throughput with their wipe process and improved data security.