Installation and User Guide

Note: This software is FREE for personel use.
License: This software is released with license. OSI-Approved Open Source » GNU Library or Lesser General Public License version 3.0 (LGPLv3)
Copyrights (You are allowed to make changes to this software)

What is NDW - Guide

Installation - Guide

Bulk Erase SAS SATA SCSI Storage Devices - Guide

Firmware Secure Erase Bulk NVME, SSD, SATA - Guide

Bulk Erase Apple MacBook iMac Data Wiping - Guide

Enterprise SATA / SAS Bulk Data Wiping - Guide

Enterprise Servers Data Wiping - Guide

User - Guide

Brief Introduction

Are you looking to wipe data from bulk hard disk drives?
Do you wipe data regularly from bulk hard disk drives?

If your answer is yes, then this software developed specifically for you. Read through this WIKI page to understand what it can do and how bulk hard disk drive wiping is used.

Network Data Wiping is intelligent data erasing system for companies and small businesses wanting to securely erase data from large number of hard disk drives concurrently.

The solution consists of a server machine, a network switch in isolation and PXE boot enabled workstations.
NDW_Server_Rel_4.5 is fully automated zero touch system and is out of the box ready to use solution. No configuration is required. Simply plug the system together via network and its ready to use.

Key Features

Automation

The key feature of this product is that user should not touch the keyboard or a mouse to use this solution, other than boot workstations via network. This solution is fully automated and out of box ready to use. No configuration is required.

Friendly GUI

A web based easy to use and friendly Graphical User Interface, can be accessed via any browser, IOS and Android compatible.

Database

This solution is database driven and all data collected from HDDs are stored in a central database, that can be further integrated with third party ERP or your existing management software.

Data Reporting

Comprehensive and detailed automated reports for HDD Wipes.

Certificates of Erasure

Automatically generate printable certificates of data erasure, these can be exported to PDF or Excel format.

Mini self-adhesive certificates

A small self-adhesive sticker is automatically printed upon successful wipe, that can be attached to the hard disk drive. This sticker contains HDD Size, HDD Type and name, model number, serial number, wiped date, algorithm used to wipe the HDD, and wipe status.

On Demand mini self-adhesive certificate printing

Sometimes you may lose a barcode label or is torn away from the HDD, in these cases you can scan hdd serial number into GUI and it will let you reprint the barcode label.

ZPL/EPL Printing support

All ZPL compatible printers such as Zebra, UPS, Citizen and other are supported for barcode label printing. You don’t have to install any drivers, ZPL printers are supported as plug and play, and your printer will work out of the box as long as it has USB port. Printers with serial port are not supported.

Automated Grading of HDD

We all know HDDs have mechanical spindles and lots of moving parts, there is a tear and wear as the drive ages. Amongst worst wear and tear are the bad sectors, grading of the HDD is done on case by case basis. If the HDD has greater than 0 current pending sectors that drive is considered B Grade otherwise drive is A Grade.

Automated Health Reporting

Reporting of health such as CRC erros, drive spin up time, drive temperature at the time of wiping, reallocated sectors, pending reallocated sectors, UDMA CRC errors, quality of drive such as power cycle counts and various other information are reported. This information can be downloaded as Excel spreadsheet or printed.

Realtime and Live Monitoring of Wiping / Erasure Workstations*

NDW provides realtime and live monitoring of workstations erasure and wiping progress, realtime progress can be viewed via any web browsers or on the NDW server display monitor.

Capacity

This solution is capable of wiping hard disk drives from 65,450 network attached computers concurrently. Each computer may have multiple hard drives. Calculated capacity of the single NDW server is 2,00,000 hard disk drives concurrently. Capacity is dependent on network speed, faster the network more the capacity.

Realtime and Live Monitoring of Wiping Progress for each HDD

NDW is tailor made to make your life easier by giving you control to view the realtime and live progress of each HDD wipe and erasure status. See below an example of a dashboard displaying live progress of HDD wiping status.

API and Third Party integration – API

“Application Protocol” and integration with third party is possible and it is only available on demand. If you want NDW to integrate into your existing enterprise software, we can help you integrate this software with ease. Please get in touch with the author.

Realtime and Live Monitoring of Entire Network Data Wiping

NDW now allows you to view the live and realtime progress of entire network by using any web browser. A dashboard which display brief information for the entire network's data wiping progress and health. See below an example.

Application Customization

If you want to introduce more features or wanting the application to do more and the way you want, this is possible and can be achieved by customizing the application according to your needs. Please contact us and we will look into your needs.

Comprehensive Information for each Hard Disk Drive

NDW is now equiped with comprehensive and detail information for each hard disk drive, this information can be access via any web browser and it is automatically shown on the NDW server display monitor.

Free version vs Paid version

Free version is limited to 25 hard disk wipes, after this limit is reached software will cease to function and you will no longer be able to use the software or access the GUI. However, paid version allows you to wipe unlimited number of HDDs for infinite period.

HDD Failure Detection and Reporting

NDW has been completely redesigned and redeveloped with the capability to detect HDD failures and provide real time reporting and progress for such failures. HDD failures are detected realtime and reported to provide accurate information in time, this allow you to make right and effective decisions.

New and Improved Wiping Workstation GUI

NDW has been completely redesigned and redeveloped with tons of new features as well as new GUI on the workstation which provides realtime and important information related to each HDD.

Automatic Rotation of Widgets on Wiping Workstation

NDW now displays both smart information as well as realtime progress of each hard disk drives. Displays are automatically rotated between brief over all wiping progress and comprehensive informtaion.

Benefits.

• Automated fully unattended network based data wiping.
• Comprehensive Reporting
• Client based reporting
• Automated and centralized certificate of data erasure management
• Graphics Charts
• Hard Disk Drive bad sectors reporting
• Hard Disk Smart Data collection and storing in central database
• Hard Disk Drives health reports
• Friendly GUI Graphical User Interface

Limitations:

• All types of storage devices are supported, but USB flash drives such as USB sticks are not recorded in the database due to USB not having a serial number.
• All type of RAID arrays are supported in JBOD / IT mode. RAID controller should be flashed to JBOD / IT mode so it can work with NDW.
• Free version is limited to 25 hard disk drives. After this limit software will cease to function. If you want unrestricted copy of this software please get in touch with the author.

Network based HDD data wiping NDW Server Installation

In this section I will show you how to install the NDW “Network Data Wiping” server software.
Please click this link to visit Installation Guide

NDW - Server Installation Video Guide - Tutorial

Please follow this link read how to install NDW - Server. Network Data Wiping - Server Software Installation Guide.

How the solution works.

Automated NDW “Network HDD data Wiping” is a complete solution that has operating system and server software which is installed on a computer. Server is connected to a network switch and several PXE boot enabled workstations are attached to the network. As soon as the workstation is powered on, it boots off the network via the server and begins wiping all the attached hard disk drives. Once all the hard drives have been wiped, a mini self-adhesive data destruction certificate is printed and data related to each hard disk will is stored in the central server’s database, Data can be accessed using web GUI interface.

(Self-adhesive mini data destruction certificate that is printed automatically after each HDD data wipe that you can attach to HDD).

You can see above label it has following codes.

PCC: Power Cycle Counts, lower the number better the hard drive.
REC: Reallocated Event Count (Large number of REC meaning more tear and wear)
CPS: Current Pending Sector “This is related to bad sectors, 0 is better any other figure is bad.
OU: Offline Un-correctable “Offline sectors that cannot be corrected or reallocated”

(See the network diagram below).

Network Diagram

Graphical User Interface (GUI) NDW Server - Network HDD Data Wiping

Access the GUI at following URL. http://192.168.1.253

Below you can see the main menu of the automated data wiping system. The main menu includes dashboard showing entire state of data wiping, you can dig down into data wiping information by clicking any widget on the dashboard.

You can now start a new network data wiping by clicking “START WIPING” button.

Once you click “START NETWORK WIPING” button you will see following screen. (Screen shot on the next page)

Please fill the require information and click Save.

Note: Please fill all fields otherwise you may have problems with wiping.

Enable or Disable USB Pen/Stick Flash Drives Wiping

Important Note: USB pen drives such as USB sticks, flash drives does not have any serial number neither any smart chip or any smart information. Due to the fact that there is no identification available for such devices, therefore these devices cannot be stored in the database. However, if you enable USB flash devices, they will be wiped but information may not be stored in the Database.

In order to enable or disable the USB devices, please use START NETWORK WIPING and choose to enable or disable USB devices.

Once you have completed all the selections, click Save. Following message will appear.

Now you can close this window and begin data wiping.

Data Wiping

In order to begin actual data wiping, please ensure all your workstations have network cards and pxe boot is enabled. Also make sure all the hard disk drives are connected either using SATA, ATA or external RAIDS arrays.

Now boot the workstations.

Important Note: Please make sure you boot the workstation into NIC or PXE or Network Boot. For example, on a Dell machine pressing F12 key while BIOS screen is displayed will produce a one time boot menu. Choose network boot or PXE to boot from Network.

See below an exmaple.

Important Note if you cannot see the network boot option, you can enable this option from system BIOS settings. Please refer to your system's manufacturer guide.

see below an example.

another example

How to boot into PXE without Network Boot enable NIC card

If your system does not support PXE or Network boot, you can obtain a USB stick or USB boot PXE image which you can burn onto a USB flash drive and boot into NDW PXE using normal network card without PXE feature. Please contact sales@greatengland.co.uk to obtain a PXE bootable USB flash drive.

Note: You can now download tailor made USB image from NDW server which you can burn on a USB stick. http://192.168.1.253/ipxe.usb
This image is ready to boot any workstation to NDW network . Download this image and burn to usb stick using rufus application. Please refer to rufus for user guide.

Apple Mac Network Booting and NDW Data Wiping

Apple Mac systems does not utilize PXE protocols, they use different protocol called BSDP "Boot Service Discovery Protocol". Almost all Apple Mac systems are UEFI systems and only support BSDP network booting. NDW has been designed to accomodate both IBM compatible systems as well as Apple Mac. NDW automatically detects the system upon booting and delivers appropriate boot service to each system without any action required from your part. A large number of Apple Mac systems have been tested to work with NDW. We have reports that some Apple Mac systems do not boot via network. Please contact the author if your Apple Mac system does not network boot properly.

Proceed to Actual Data Wiping

Now please boot your workstation into Network or PXE.

You may see following screen during the boot process.

Next you will see Smart Information related to each HDD, at this point you can hotswap the HDDs if you wish, otherwise continue to the next stage. Next screen will show you a Warning message.

Next you will see NDW application begining to wipe data automatically from all attached hard disk drives.

Another screenshot taken from workstation actively wiping HDDs.

You can see above a screen shot taken from a system that is currently wiping 8 x HDD over network. Information and realtime progress of each HDD wipe is shown in a widget above.

You will also see following screen, see below. On the wiping workstation screen displays will automatically switch between above and below screen. Below screen will display comprehensive and detailed information for each hard disk drive, above above widgets will only display brief information.

Another screenshot.

Important note: Above is just an example of one machine wiping data over network, you may start wiping hundreds or thousands of machines at the same time. (All machines wiping data from attached hard disk drives concurrently) Now just imagine, if you are wiping data from 100s or maybe 1000s of machines concurrently, each machine may have multiple hard disk drives, see the above expample; in this case it would be extremely difficult to monitor all machines and HDD at once. To address the managability, we have now created a realtime and live monitoring portal, where you can monitor all machines and hdds progress in realtime from a click of mouse using management portal.

To view simple dashboard just visit the home page http://192.168.1.253 and you will see following on the top section of the page. This information is realtime and live. It updates automatically without refreshing the page.

NDW - Server User Interface Video Guide - Tutorial

NDW - Data Wiping Workstation Video Guide - Tutorial

Brief information Dashboard Realtime Monitoring

To view live and realtime progress of each system that is currently wiping or has failed to wipe or has finished wiping sucessfully, visit following link from the front page.

The next page will display those systems currently wiping, or have finished wiping within last 12 hours, or failed to wipe within last 12 hours. Data showing in this section is realtime and live. (failed, finished wiping or stuck systems are shown only for last 12 hours in this section). You can see below there are 3 systems currently wiping data and status is in progress, 2 x systems have finished successfully wiping data.

Important Note: If you wish to drill down further into each system, you can click the widget to see progress related to each Hard Disk Drive.

See below, click system data wiping machine widget, following information related to each Hard Disk Drive is displayed. You can see this system has 28 Hard Disk Drives, and only 20 are currently wiping and 8 HDD has already finished wiping data.

Important Note If you wish to drill down further into each Hard Disk Drive, you can do so by clicking the HDD widget, this will open up another page which will show detailed information related to that specific Hard Disk Drive. See below an example.

Important Note See above, this hard disk drive is automatically marked as Grade - C the reason for this grade is that this HDD has too many bad sectors; hence the hard disk drive is marked as Grade C.

Important Note Grading of hard disk drive is automatically done by the NDW software. See following chart for Grading of HDD.

Bad Sectors equal to 0 = Grade A
Bad Sectors greater than and between 0 - 99 = Grade B
Bad Sectors greater than 99 = Grade C

How to view wiping status of all Hard Disk Drives.

To view wiping status of all hard disk drives, clicking link will display all Hard Disk Drives regardless of systems.

Clicking above button will display all Hard disk drives. See below an example.

How to view comprehensive details of all HDDs currently wiping.

To view comprehensive details of each HDD regardless of systems, clicking below button will produce realtime progress with comprehensive detailed information for each HDD.

Next page will display realtime progress and detailed information for each HDD that is either currently wiping, finished wiping or has failed to wipe.
See below an example.

How to view systems those failed to wipe HDDs

Failure to wipe data from HDD could occur due to many reasons such as bad HDD, or faulty hardware, or too many read / write erros. Some HDDs simple crash the operating system or the NDW data wiping application. Those HDD that crash the NDW application or operating system will never appear anywhere in the system because NDW is not able to probe the HDDs at all and Operating System kernel panicked and shutdown. However, all systems those failed to wipe data during last 24 hours will appear in this section.

Click following button to view the failed systems.

Next section will display systems those failed to wipe data within last 24 hours.

You can see above, currently there is only 1 system that has failed to wipe data from HDDs. Should another system fails, more failed systems will automatically appear here without refreshing this page. You can see above, only 2 x HDD were failed and the total progress stalled at 92% complete.

How to view HDDs realtime progress for those failed to wipe

To view progress for HDDs those failed to wipe, visit following section and clicking the button will display HDDs those failed to wipe within last 24 hours.

Clicking this button will produce realtime and live progress for failed HDDs regarding of the systems.

How to view Comprehensive details for HDDs those failed to wipe

To view comprehensive detailed realtime, live progress for HDDs those failed to wipe, clicking this section will produce required realtime progress report.

Clicking above section will produce realtime progress and detailed information for HDDs those failed to wipe during last 24 hours.

How to Rebrand Certificates and Portal with my own company logo & details

You can modify business slogan, business address, contact details as well as upload your own company logo. So the certificates are completely branded with your company details.

In order to reband, click "rebranding" link from the home page http://192.168.1.253

Click the rebranding link as shown above.
Next page will allow you to update company information as well as upload your own logo. Once you have completed this process, all certificates and charts will be rebranding as your own company with your information and logo.

How to operate Data Wiping Mangement Console

Once the data wiping has finished execution, success message will appear and a barcode label will automatically be printed for each hard disk drive and the workstation will shut down automatically.

Once you see the success message or you find the system shutdown at this point you can remove the existing hard disk drive and install the next batch to be wiped.

You can monitor the status of data wiping using the server GUI interface.

http://192.168.1.253

To view the status of the data wiping please click the customer portal button.

Next screen may looks like this:

In the above screenshot you have 3 options. From date, to date and customer ID or name. If you have several customer they will automatically appear on the list. Choose the date range and customer that you want to view the status and click submit.

The next page will show you detailed information about data wiping progress (see below screenshot).

The page about shows you customer name, hdd manufacturer, model, serial number, size, firmware, method used to wipe, date wiped, start and end time, workstation number, results and finally the last column allows you to print individual certificate for each Hard Disk Drive.

Note: "Print Button" in the last column will let you print individual data erasure certificate for each storage device.

Important note: At the bottom of each page there is button to export the certificate to MS Excel format.
Now let’s view the individual certificate for each hard disk drive by clicking the print button of each hard disk drive column.

Certificate of Data Erasure for a single Hard Disk Drive

You may have noticed above there are few barcodes, the first barcode contains customer name, 2nd barcode contains customer name and hdd serial number, 3rd barcode which is a data matrix barcode contains all the information regarding hdd, method code contains the method used to wipe the hdd and spindle code contains model and serial number of the hdd.

These barcodes ensures that the certificate is authentic and is not tampered. You can read the data from barcodes by using standard 2d and 3d barcode scanners.

Lets go back a step to the previous page.

Export Data to Excel or PDF format

As explained previously at the bottom of every page there is a button to export the report to Excel. In this case it is called Imran-Report-Excel.

Clicking this button will open this report in Excel, you can use excel file to email to customer or create PDFs.
Here is the screenshot showing this report in Excel.

Note: You can remove extra columns from excel spreadsheet that you don’t need.

You can also export all certificates to PDF format by visiting to "all certificates" section in customer portal. See below screen shot.

Kindly select desired dates and click "All Certificate" button. Next screen will let you generate all data erasure certificates and you can download these into PDF file format.

See below example:

Choose the number of certificates you want in a PDF file and click the PDF button and it will open up a print dialogue box, see below an example.

Click Save and it will produce nice formatted PDF file.

An example PDF generated by NDW is attached using above method. See below attachments.

Click here to download sample PDF file.

Click here to download Summary erasure certificate PDF file

Hard Disk Drive Data Wiping Charts

On the home page click the button “Wiping Charts”.

In the next page select the dates and the customer you want to see the data wiping charts.

Next page looks like following (See screenshot)

Customer Graphical Reporting Portal

Once you have the selected the dates and customer click submit.

The next page will show you nicely formatted charts.

Note: There is a button at the bottom of the page to export the data to Excel downloadable file.

Hard Disk Drives / Storage Device Health Reports

On the home page click the button Health Reports.

On the next page select the dates and the customer you want to view the hdd health report and click submit.

Hard Disk Drives Health Reporting Portal

The next page will show you the health report of hard disk drives wiped for the customer between dates you have selected.

As you can see in the page above health report contains comprehensive hard disk drive health information. By viewing the health report you can determine the bad sectors, age, number of time it has been spun, power on time, power cycle counts and so much more.

Hard Disk Drives Health Report Charts

HDD Health report chart also contains very useful information. This page give you an indication of heath of all the hard drives for a specific customer in graphical format.

To view health charts go to the home page. http://192.168.1.253 and select the “Health Charts” button. In the next page select the dates and the customer and click submit.

You will be presented with very nice looking HDD health charts.

Hard Disk Wiping Mini Certificate - Barcode Scanning and Printing

If you have a ZPL compatible USB printer attached to the server USB port, barcodes will automatically be printed upon each successful hdd wipe. However, sometimes odd situations such as printer is not ready, or the adhesive label roll is finished therefore printer was unable to print the label. Now you can reprint the label with the touch of a mouse click.

On the main menu, click the BARCODES button.

The next screen looks like this below.

Make sure your mouse cursor / pointer is in submit box and click.

Now you can start scanning the hard disk drive serial numbers with the barcode scanner, or if you do not have a barcode scanner you can type the serial number by hand.

Note: if you are inputting the serial number manually by hand make sure you press the Enter/Return key after every serial number, so that each serial number appears on the new line underneath.

See below, your scanned barcodes will look like this.

Once completed scanning the barcodes, click submit button.

The next window would look like this.

Barcode Scanning and Exporting Data to Excel

We can now export this page to Excel so that we can email it to someone.

At the right hand bottom corner click the button Excel-Report-Excel.

Clicking this button will open up the report in Microsoft Excel.

Below screen shot is from Excel.

On Demand Barcode Label Printing

Now lets go back to the web browser and reprint a barcode label for a specific hard drive.

Click print barcode for the required hard disk drive and the next screen will automatically print the barcode, make sure barcode label printer is connected to the server machine and is powered on.

Next screen would look like this and a barcode will be printed too.

Data Erasure Certificate printing by serial number

Clicking the Certificate button will cause the system to auto generate and display a data erasure certificate for the specified hard disk drive.

Next screen will produce the certificate that you can print or export to excel file format.

Network Data Wiping - NDW Realtime and Live progress of HDD wiping by each system.

ZPL Compatible Printer printing the HDD Label barcodes.

Self-Adhesive mini data erasure certificate attached to the HDD.

Network Data Wiping - NDW Realtime and Live progress of HDD wiping by each Hard Disk Drive

HDD Barcode Scanning with 2D handheld barcode scanner

Barcode Scanning with Handheld 2D barcode Scanner

Network Data Wiping - NDW Realtime and Live progress of HDD wiping by each Hard Disk Drive Comprehensive Details

Why NDW – Network HDD Data Wiping solution was created.

This product is a result of inspiration from DBAN project, dban is a basic data erasing and wiping software; DBAN is tailored for individual system or HDD erasing, whereas NDW is fully automated specially developed for wiping large number of systems and HDDs concurrently and is loaded with tons of new and useful features.

In addition to above, in the past we have seen IT recycling companies erasing data manually from several thousand hard disk drives either using industry leading brands such as Blancco and other various software. The common thing among those software are lack of automation and non-ease of use.

User spends long time going through settings and menu and gathering reports or creating erasure certificates manually and attaching “ERASED” or “WIPED” hand written stickers manually to the hard disk drive. The entire process was time wasting and not very effective.

After analysing their situation we decide to embark on a journey to design new software that addresses industry’s concern. This software addresses following shortcomings.

Suggestion or comments

If you have suggestions or comments please reach out to the author of this software.

Note: This software is FREE for personel use.
License: This software is released with license. OSI-Approved Open Source » GNU Library or Lesser General Public License version 3.0 (LGPLv3)
Copyrights (You are allowed to make changes to this software)