Erase drives

You can use the Erase option to prepare an unassigned drive for removal from the system. This procedure permanently removes data, ensuring that the data cannot be read again.

Before you begin

The drive must be in an Unassigned state.

About this task

Use the Erase option only if you want to permanently remove all data on a drive. If the drive is secure-enabled, the Erase option performs a cryptographic erase and resets the drive's security attributes back to secure-capable.

Note: The Erase feature does not support some older drive models. If you attempt to erase one of these older models, an error message appears.
  1. Select Hardware .
  2. If the graphic shows the controllers, click Show front of shelf .
    The graphic changes to show the drives instead of the controllers.
  3. Optionally, you can use the filter fields to view all the unassigned drives in the shelf. From the Show drives that are... drop-down list, select Unassigned.
    The shelf view shows only the unassigned drives; all others are grayed out.
  4. To open the drive's context menu, click on a drive that you want to erase. (If you want to select multiple drives, you can do so in the Erase Drives dialog box.)
    CAUTION:
    Possible loss of data – The Erase operation cannot be undone. Make sure you select the correct drives during the procedure.
  5. From the context menu, select Erase.
    The Erase Drives dialog box opens, showing all the eligible drives for an erase operation.
  6. If desired, select additional drives from the table. You cannot select all drives; be sure one drive remains deselected.
  7. Confirm the operation by typing erase, and then click Erase .
    CAUTION:
    Be sure you want to continue with this operation. Once you click Yes in the next dialog, the operation cannot be aborted.
  8. In the Estimated Completion time dialog box, click Yes to continue with the erase operation.
The Erase operation might take several minutes or several hours. You can view the status in Home > View Operations in Progress. When the Erase operation completes, the drives are available for use in another volume group or disk pool, or in another storage array.
If you want to use the drive again, you must initialize it first. To do this, select Initialize from the drive's context menu.