How to Securely Erase Drives on PERC H710 Mini in Dell

debiandell-percmegacli

The controller doesn't let me convert drives to JBOD for some reason, so I can't reach them with hdparm to send –security-erase-enhanced ATA command. So I decided to use MegaCli for which I found two different commands but both fail:

MegaCli -PDInstantSecureErase -PhysDrv[32:1] -Force -a0

Adapter 0: Secure Erase is not allowed on device at Enclosure - 32, Slot - 1.

Exit Code: 0x00

MegaCli -SecureErase Start Simple -PhysDrv [32:1] -a0

Adapter: 0: Failed to start Secure Erase on Physical Device at EnclId-32 SlotId-1

FW error description:
  The requested command is invalid.

Exit Code: 0x02

This is not a one time task, so taking drives out and sec-erase them elsewhere doesn't solve the issue.

Best Answer

Legally required note: I work for Dell

Secure erase can be done via racadm, redfish, wsman, or the lifecycle controller.

If you want to do it with racadm see systemerase here. You could do something like racadm systemerase secureerasepd. All the drives sold these days are SED drives and this will blow away the keys used for the data or it will use the SCSI SANITIZE command.

If you're wanting to do it programmatically there's an example script here.

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