For those interested, this article shows what Netapp does with returned disks: http://now.netapp.com/Knowledgebase/solutionarea.asp?id=ntapcs9168 --paul

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 09:28:13 -0600, Ted Weston Ted.Weston@oracle.com wrote:

Good morning -

Thanks for all the frank discussion, Toasters. It's nice to see this much activity.

I've heard from our NetApp reps and onsite CE's that up to 85% of the "failed" drives are tested with no faults. These are redeployed in the field as soon as they are able to be shipped.

I've heard nothing of NetApp actually destroying any data on them. While it would be ethical for them to do so, I doubt it's economical.

To answer another question posed regarding the upgrade shelves from 72GB to 144GB, we'll have to wait and see what our rollout plans are for that.

-t

-----Original Message----- From: Jeff Mohler [mailto:jeff.mohler@signasys.com] Sent: Monday, February 21, 2005 9:09 PM To: John Stoffel; Ted Weston Cc: Toasters Subject: RE: Destroying failed disks

It's a calculated trade-off. We assume that NetApp does the right thing and crunches the disks once they have done a failure analysis back in their labs.

---

If you assume that, and you really care, I would not assume any vendor of drives or storage material does this.

I have NO idea what Netapp does, but I would not ASSUME that they physically destroy disks with your data on them.

Right now, I assume youre thinking about upping your service contract to be able to keep your own dead disks so that you can destoy them yourself and remove the assumption of the mitigation of risk.

But only you can know for sure.