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BLANCCO 5

1. 2 2 Process area The process area contains the numbered steps required to detect and erase the machine s drives Erasure step update the erasure report Input amp edit step view and back up the erasure report Report step 2 3 Work area The work area contains all the specific information and details for every process step available drives and erasure standards in Erasure step additional fields for report editing in Input amp edit ue SS blancco 12 82 step asset and erasure information in Report sten Moreover the user can switch between a Standard and an Advanced view of the UI while performing a drive erasure Most of the actions of the user and interaction with the software take place in the Work area 2 4 Color codes Several colors are used in the Blancco UI These colors allow a clear understanding of the current status of an action being carried out 2 4 1 Gray color Task has not yet been initialized or is not active 2 4 2 Green color The task has been completed successfully E g selected drive erased successfully additional report fields updated successfully and report sent saved successfully 2 4 3 Yellow color User action is required E g drive erasure is paused requires user intervention Also if an erasure raises a warning a yellow informative message is written in the report 2 4 4 Red color Given task has failed E g drive erasure process has failed or has bee
2. Even though it has been enabled the B A R is not displayed when rebooting the machine 2 Problem explanation In order to activate the B A R functionality it has to be enabled via the B5CT Blancco 5 has to erase successfully all detected drives during the same session an erasure report has to be generated and kept saved on a USB stick or sent to BMC The reason the B A R does not show up can be due to the fact that Blancco 5 is being used to erase a machine that has 5 drives Blancco 5 can erase within the same session up to 4 drives which is not enough to activate the B A R writing 3 Problem solution workaround As Blancco 5 cannot erase more than 4 drives per session in order to activate the B A R the user has to use Blancco 5 Server that can erase more than 4 drives per session In case the user does not have Blancco 5 Server licenses all the machine s drives can still be erased in more than one session e g from 5 to 8 drives one reboot is necessary and two erasure reports need to be kept If the user activates the Fingerprint functionality this minireport will be written on each erased drive individually and can be used as a substitute of the B A R although a hexadecimal reader is required to check the Fingerprint 9 14 Misleading messages Blancco 5 aims to provide clear warning and error messages to the user However some of the messages and GUI popups currently available in Blancco 5 can be mislea
3. SS blancco 29 82 Not started In this state the erasure has not been started or the selected drive is not active Ongoing Bruce Schneier s Algorithm 37 71 34 60 MB s 0E In this state the erasure process is being performed The progress is shown by the blue bar and the percentage of completion Current write speed and pause cancel buttons are displayed next to the progress bar The erasure standard used for erasure is shown on the left side of the progress bar Paused Rm paused EI In this state the erasure has been paused by the user The erasure can be resumed by pressing the resume button or canceled by pressing the cancel button finished When the erasure has been successfully completed Ender If the erasure has been canceled by the user If the erasure has failed due to e g read write errors during the erasure Pause button DU TO pause an ongoing erasure Resume To resume a paused erasure button Cancel button D To cancel an ongoing or paused erasure 4 3 3 2 6 Drive info icons Depending on the drive several icons can appear under the progress bar The icons can be Remapped REMAPPED 12 sectors count This icon will appear if remapped sectors are detected on the drive The number displayed after the Remapped string is the number of remapped sectors detected on the drive The number of detected remapped sectors can change during the erasure as it is first detected before the erasure takes place
4. art Username Communication settings Hostname IP 10 1 1 1 Port 8443 Username ExampleMCUser Password VeryStrongPassword Proxy settings Hostname IP 10 1 1 2 Port 8080 Username ExampleProxyUser Password VeryStrongPassword 3 4 Report Issue function button Description IP address of the server running the BMC Port number of the BMC This port was set up when installing the BMC it is the port 8443 by default HTTPS protocol always enforced Please check the BMC manual for more information User for accessing the BMC Password for accessing the BMC IP address of the proxy server Port number of the proxy server Username for accessing the proxy server Password for accessing the proxy server If issues are found they can be reported by pressing the Report issue button with this button the user generates a detailed report that contains additional system information and logs used to understand and reproduce the problem These issue reports have to be attached and sent via email to Blancco Support for further analysis Bee L SS blancco 18 82 Fi 1 Report Issue Pressing the button opens the Report issue window Report issue Save report settings Select media Issue report name 20130226 064206 Issue repor Problem description The window is divided in to two fields Problem description field and settings related to saving the issue report on a
5. 800 88 Purge ATA BSI GS E Extended Firmware based erasure or Blancco SSD Erasure can permanently damage the drive s This also applies to any erasure with the Erase remapped sectors option checked Note In a general way you should avoid shutting down the computer exiting the program or disconnecting any drive while erasing it with any standard This is because all erasure information will be lost and the drive may result damaged 1 1 Legal Notice Notwithstanding the foregoing Blancco shall bear no responsibility for any interference operability or other compatibility issues which may arise as a result of any changes or updates made to the operating systems and or hardware upon which the Blancco Software is executed Likewise Blancco shall be in no way responsible for any interference operability or any other issues resulting from infection of systems and hardware upon which the Blancco Software is executed by any form of virus Trojan Horse worm malware or spyware of any form or type collectively referred to hereafter as Virus of Viruses The sole responsibility for maintaining a Virus free environment for the operation of the Blancco Software or Hardware solutions shall rest solely with the Company The license to the Product is non transferable and is granted personally to the Licensee and the Licensee shall not without prior written consent of Blancco be entitled to assign or transfer the license for any
6. or higher the test is deemed Successful e if the charge capacity percentage is below 80 the test is deemed Failed Note If the battery to check is not listed in the tests it means that Blancco 5 has not been capable of retrieving the battery s current charge or the maximum charge capacity This information is set by the battery manufacturer and some manufacturers to not necessarily follow the industry standards which ends up in improper detection There is unfortunately nothing that Blancco 5 can do about it 8 1 2 CPU The CPU test checks the functionality of the processor by checking its calculation capabilities The result of the CPU test is either Successful or Failed 8 1 3 Memory The memory test checks the low and the extended memory of a computer The tests are operated with certain data patterns each data pattern is first written to the memory and the read and verified The test time depends on the size of the memory and the speed of the processor The result of the test can be either Successful or Failed Note Since Blancco 5 is 32bit software it can test at best 4 gigabytes of the RAM Note Blancco s memory test is a fast test of the machine s memory If a long and thorough check of the memory is required please use a specialized software such as Memtest86 or similar ue SS blancco 57 82 8 1 4 Motherboard The motherboard test will check the following e The CMOS checksum e CMOS battery If all of the
7. Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Navy Staff Office Publication NAVSO P 5239 26 Overwrite with OxFFFFFFFF Overwrite with OxFFFFFFE4 Overwrite with aperiodic random data Verify data National Computer Security Center NCSC TG 025 Overwrite with 0x35 Overwrite with OxCA Overwrite with 0x97 Overwrite with aperiodic random data Verify data Air Force System Security Instructions 5020 Overwrite with 0x00 Overwrite with OxFA Overwrite with 0x00 Overwrite with OxAA Verify data U S Army AR380 19 Overwrite with random byte Overwrite with OxAA Overwrite with 0x55 Verify data OPNAVINST 5239 1A Overwrite with OxFF Overwrite with 0x00 Overwrite with random byte Verify data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with 0x00 Verify data ges L SS blancco 79 82 Peter Gutmann s Algorithm Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with 0x555555 Overwrite with OxAAAAAA Overwrite with 0x924924 Overwrite with 0x492492 Overwrite with 0x249249 Overwrite with 0x00 Overwrite with 0x11 Overwrite with 0x22 Overwrite with 0x33 Overwrite with 0x44 Overwrite with 0x55 Overwrite with 0x66 Overwrite with 0x77 Overwrite with 0x88 Overwrite with 0x99 Overwrite with OxAA Overwrite with 0
8. be empty e The name should not be BLANCCO this name is reserved for Blancco 5 bootable USB sticks exclusively 4 6 2 3 Send button Send button is used to send the report to the BMC If this button is gray and does not respond to clicking the Communication settings have not been configured correctly in the Settings window Once the Communication settings are configured correctly the Send button is usable When the Send button is pressed the report is sent to the BMC If the report was sent successfully the following message is displayed ue SS blancco 39 82 Report sending Report sent successfully If the report sending fails an error pop up is shown This error can occur for numerous reasons the most common ones being The network cable is disconnected or damaged The server running the BMC is shut down BMC is not running Communication settings are not valid wrong IP wrong port wrong BMC_user wrong BMC_password Report sending Report sending failed network problem Management Console is not responding or wrong communication settings 4 7 Small asset report The bottom of the Process area contains a small asset report with the machine s basic hardware information This report shows the machine model the CPU model and frequency the RAM amount and its type mpotek GmbH VirtualBox Genuinelntel Intell RI Corel TM 15 2467M CPU w 1 60GHz 1 6 GHz 501 MB RAM More
9. detailed information about the machine is found from the generated report Report step ue SS blancco 40 82 5 KEYBOARD CONTROLS Blancco 5 can exclusively be controlled with the keyboard only no mouse required 5 1 Generic controls 5 1 1 Tab key The Tab key moves the focus inside a window or inside the Work area from element to element The focus moves from left to right top to bottom in a circular way By combining the Shift key with the Tab key Shift Tab the direction is reversed goes backwards from right to left bottom to top The x button that is visible in the top right of popup dialog windows cannot be reached via the Tab key Use the Escape key to close such windows 5 1 2 Arrow keys Whenever the focus is e Onan area that contains a horizontal and or vertical scroll bar Report step Hexviewer Help window EULA window o The Arrow keys can be used to go up down left right inside that area e Ona drop down list list of erasure standards list of languages list of keyboard layouts o The Arrow keys can be used to scroll those lists o Combining the Alt key with the down arrow Alt down arrow will expand these lists e Ona slider s handle verification slider o The Arrow keys can be used to move the handle e Ona scrollable container with elements list of drives in the Advanced view of the Erasure step o The Arrow keys can be used to move from one element to another o Use up amp down ar
10. disabled through the B5CT The CD ejection can be configured to occur at four different phases of the erasure process 1 After Blancco 5 boot up option selected by default 2 After the erasure has been completed 3 After the report has been saved or sent 4 When the machine is shutting down nee blancco 52 82 When the CD eject is enabled any optical media drive detected on the machine will be opened tray ejects This way the user can check if a Blancco 5 boot CD or any other optical media has been left in the machine This also prevents the risk of forgetting to remove media from a machine before shipping it away since this presents a security risk as these media may contain personal professional information Note It is very important that at least one option for ejecting the CD tray is selected to prevent potential data breaches 7 11 Digital Fingerprint The Digital Fingerprint is a small report that is written on the drive after the erasure and after the user has successfully saved sent a report It contains a brief summary of the erasure report information It acts as a further proof that the storage device has been erased and can be used for erasure report auditing purposes The Fingerprint is written on a single sector of the erased drive sector 200 by default and visualizing its content requires a tool that can read and display binary data such as the Blancco 5 Hexviewer The implementation of the Fingerprint is on
11. dongle is plugged in Host Bus Adapter connects a host system to other network and storage devices Hard Disk Drive is a data storage device used for storing digital information using rapidly rotating discs with magnetic surfaces A Hexviewer is a type of computer program that allows a user to access binary computer files Blancco Hexviewer allows the user to read the binary content of a drive before or after its erasure gt blancco 2 82 HPA The Host Protected Area HPA as defined is a reserved area on a data storage device It was designed to store information in such a way that it cannot be easily modified changed or accessed by the user BIOS or the OS IDE Integrated Drive Electronics is an interface for mass storage devices in which the controller is integrated into the disk or CD ROM drive Although it really refers to a general technology the term to usually refers to the ATA specification which uses this technology ISO image An ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc a type of disk image composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc including the optical disc file system Laboratory data Where advanced knowledge and tailored equipment are applied to extract data recovery from a device via alternative means This typically involves manipulating the physical components of a drive to increase the possibility of data recovery or applying knowledge of a proprietary and vendor specif
12. interrupted or continues in the background If such a situation comes to happen please refer to the Problems with the Freeze lock removal section for advices 7 7 Hidden areas in a drive There can be hidden areas in a storage device HDD SSD which cannot be normally accessed even via the BIOS These areas are 7 7 1 Host Protected Area HPA Blancco 5 can be configured to detect and automatically remove the Host Protected Area The HPA is commonly used to store the recovery part of the operating system and can contain sensitive data When a Host Protected Area is found the entire area is automatically removed Note In order to guarantee the functionality of this option please disable the BIOS HDD drive detection for proper detection and execution of Blancco 5 In some cases the computer must be rebooted in order to remove the HPA 7 7 2 Device Configuration Overlay DCO Device Configuration Overlays DCO is another but less known optional feature set It first appeared in the ATA 6 standard DCO enables the possibility to create a special partition in a drive that the user or the operating system cannot access This special area of the drive creates a risk ue SS blancco 50 82 that some data might be left on the drive after the erasure unless the erasure product is capable of detecting and also extending and erasing DCO areas Blancco 5 can be configured to automatically detect and remove the DCO area Blancco 5 can activate inte
13. must be installed Data that has been erased from a data storage device with this program cannot be recovered by any existing method Minimum System Requirements e x86 architecture machine e 512 MB RAM memory in most cases erasing servers with 2 drives requires more RAM e CD drive or a CD compatible drive e USB port for exporting saving reports locally e SVGA display and VESA compatible video card for graphical user interface e Optional Ethernet NIC DHCP Server running on local network Blancco 5 can also be booted from a USB flash drive A bootable USB flash drive can be created with the help of Blancco USB Creator tool Contact Blancco for more information If there is a dedicated network for erasing machines Blancco 5 can also boot via a Preboot execution Environment or PXE as long as the machines to be erased support PXE booting Contact Blancco for more information Requirements for the User Person s using this program should have prior experience using computers and the user should at all times follow the guidance of this documentation and all guidance given by Blancco Booting and Computer Settings e Check that all the drives are attached properly to the computer See the manufacturer s guide for this e Check that the BIOS clock s time is up to date e If you have a laptop computer plug in the power adapter There may be problems when erasing a laptop on battery power SS blancco 10 82 e Disable or ty
14. reason including without limitation merger reorganization sale of all or substantially all of the assets change of control or operation of law ue SS blancco 11 82 2 BLANCCO 5 USER INTERFACE When Blancco 5 is booted the main view is shown after the loading screen It is divided into three main areas the header area the process area and the work area Bae s blancco peo Header area Blancco 5 BET l 7 Fi I Version 5 6 0 ai Vi Erasure licenses 246 PT i Settings Report issue Shutdown Asset licenses 98 o Process Manual Number of drives 3 Advanced Vendor Model Serial number 1 Erasure 1 VBOX HARDDISK VBdbed0fOf e7ee2a64 2 Hardware tests 2 VBOX HARDDISK VB301b2686 9414022a 3 Input amp edit 4 Report 3 VBOX HARDDISK VB287c5490 c923484f Process area Work area innotek GmbH VirtualBox 1 e 110011 Genuinelntel Intel R Core TM ed 011001 17 4510U CPU 2 00GHz e ar 2 7 GHz CPUO DN 1008 MB RAM ME Erase 2 1 Header area The header area contains information about the software in use such as the software name and the version It also indicates the amount of remaining licenses The Header area also contains a series of buttons called Function buttons which have a general purpose such as changing the user interface language keyboard layout configuration screensaver settings communication settings reporting an issue help menu and shutting down the machine
15. result of an erased SSD using Blancco s SSD method can be one of only two states erased success and not erased failed or canceled by the user An erased drive constitutes one that has had the whole erasure and verification processes completed without any identified errors The drive is also checked for responsiveness once erased and must present itself in an operational condition 10 2 2 Failure Logic Blancco s SSD erasure solution follows a multistep erasure and verification process if any of the steps fail the whole process results in a fail This will result in an erasure report stating that the erasure process has not been successful The logic for erasure failure includes the following ue SS blancco 74 82 e An SSD being erased must allow the firmware level erasure process to execute The software will reject those that do not support these commands as it is an essential part of the SSD erasure method If the software cannot access the firmware command for any reason the drive s erasure will result in a fail o If an SSD has an ATA Master Password set it is not possible to access the firmware erasure command or write data to it This password must be removed before erasure can be considered If it is not possible to retrieve the password or somehow bypass it to unlock the drive it cannot be erased o Drives that have a freeze lock placed on them by the host machine s BIOS will not allow access to the firmware erasu
16. tests are successful then the end result will be Successful Otherwise the result will be Failed 8 2 Manual tests Manual tests are run by selecting them from the Hardware test page and then running them With all manual test the user input and interaction are required If a test is not required the box before the test can be unchecked This way that test won t be included in the report 8 2 1 Display The Display Test has been designed to test the color reproduction and the condition of the display attached to the machine The choice of the colors allows the user to easily identify any defective pixels as displays are based on the RGB color model The test itself consists of red green blue black and white screens with the color currently being displayed written in slowly flashing letters After the colors a grid of straight horizontal and vertical lines is shown Lastly the screen is continuously filled with different colored dots Press Space or Right arrow to continue to the next screen press Backspace or Left arrow to return to the previous screen To exit the test before the test s end press the Escape key All the test screens are shown below Red Green Blue colors Black White colors SS blancco 58 82 white Horizontal vertical lines grid and constantly appearing colored dots GE 2 p The test has ended the user can add extra info on the text field and pass the test Successful stat
17. will appear on the report highlighting that an SSD was erased o If the SSD you are trying to erase does not support the firmware command or it is not possible to remove the freeze lock it is not possible to erase the SSD with Blancco s SSD erasure method e If the SSD drives are really old models usually 64GB or smaller it is recommended that only one SSD should be erased per machine at a time The success of erasure can be affected if two drives are attempted to be erased simultaneously e The whole drive should be erased do not erase individual partitions The use of firmware based erasure commands will not work on partitions on an SSD The whole drive must be erased when using Blancco s SSD method e The SSD should not be connected to the machine through additional pieces of hardware such as USB FireWire docking stations or PATA SATA bridges These could prevent the software s ability to issue the firmware erasure command resulting in a failed process e There should also be no instance of a RAID configuration for SSDs being erased If two SSDs are attached to the host machine erase a single drive at a time e If the SSD is not shown on the drive selection screen or the erasure process cannot be run due to non access to firmware based erasure command one possible solution is to change the SSD s mode from IDE ATA mode to AHCI Sata Native mode via the appropriate BIOS UEFI EFI settings 10 2 Erasure Result 10 2 1 Status The end
18. 7 1 Booting Options The Booting Options are a new feature introduced in Blancco 5 4 0 It allows Blancco 5 to be booted with alternative settings if there are issues with the default booting Blancco 5 5 1 image can be booted in four different ways each way enabling a different set of features These four booting options can be accessed by pressing the up or down arrow key right after the first Blancco 5 static screen appears Blancco Certified Data Erasure Starting Blancco 5 Screen might turn black momentarily please wait 7 1 1 Description These options are 1 Normal startup safe resolution Blancco 5 is loaded using a standard universal graphical driver The screen resolution of the GUI is static 1024 768 If any drive is locked the Freeze lock removal is attempted just before the erasure process the screen turns black for few seconds then restarts and the erasure begins see the Freeze lock This booting option has been tested on several configurations however the Freeze lock removal procedure may not work in all machines the standard universal graphical driver often presents display problems when the machine is awakened 2 Normal startup native resolution Blancco 5 is loaded using any available driver that corresponds to the graphical card of the machine the standard universal graphical driver is just a fallback The screen resolution is the native resolution of the machine 1024 768 or higher If any of dr
19. 7 9 Erasure status and exceptions When Blancco 5 carries out an erasure process this process can be separated in two parts Mandatory steps these are the steps that the erasure standard s native implementation mandates Usual steps are overwriting steps verification steps firmware based erasure steps hidden areas removal steps Optional steps these are steps that are not part of the erasure standard s native implementation they can be enabled on top of any erasure standard Usual steps are remapped sectors erasure steps hidden areas removal steps hidden areas erasure steps If all mandatory steps succeed the whole erasure process succeeds as well final status Erased If any mandatory step fails the whole erasure process fails as well final status Not erased If any optional step fails the erasure process generates an exception information message acknowledging the failure but the erasure process continues the final status always depending on the mandatory steps success or failure final status Erased or Not erased In some occasions the status Erased can come along information messages such as e g Remapped sectors area erasure failed or DCO area removal failed This is simply the result of the logic described hereinbefore The description of the erasure standards steps is located in the Appendix 2 Execution steps of the erasure standards 7 10 CD eject The CD eject functionality can be enabled or
20. Bee Bde Ses blancco CERTIFIED DATA ERASURE BLANCCO 5 User Manual for version 5 6 1 www blancco com DEFINITIONS ITEM 4 X B X ATA PATA B5CT BIOS BMC Checksum DCO FEPROM Fibre Channel Firmware Firmware based erasure Freeze lock HASP HBA HDD Hexviewer age Bde EXPLANATION This is the version numbering The sentence compatible with 4 x means that it is compatible with the Erasure client version 4 0 4 1 4 2 and so on Short for Advanced Technology Attachment ATA and Parallel ATA These are interface standards for the connection of storage devices such as HDDs Blancco 5 Configuration Tool Blancco software used to configure the Blancco 5 ISO image to best fit the user s needs Please read the BSCT manual for more information Acronym for Basic Input Output System On PCs BIOS contains all the code required to control for example the keyboard display screen and disk drives Blancco Management Console Blancco software used to store and manage Blancco erasure reports Please read the BMC manual for more information A checksum or hash sum is a fixed size datum computed from an arbitrary block of digital data for the purpose of detecting accidental errors that may have been introduced during its transmission or storage Device Configuration Overlay allows system vendors to purchase data storage devices from different manufacturers with potentially different size
21. CESS ANG WOR CAS ENEA EEEE AEAEE EEEE EEEE EEES 22 mk PROCCSSCS ai EEE 22 tl Mi 22 TEL SEMANO Oan e EE EE 22 5 Lt e ER e GE Tune EE e ses E oe ede ed ede dene ee eee 22 e dE EEG EE ER 4 3 1 Tab color and overall Progress NEEN 23 blancco 5 82 4 3 2 Remaining time and State con 23 EO E 24 4 3 3 1 Standard WEE 25 e GE E BNR 26 TE DIVE NNN 26 e GE NNN eer eee ner ere ner errr ne eee eee ee 27 2 Erasure SN 28 4 3 3 2 2 Erase remapped E de CN 29 22 VENN vr 29 4 3 3 2 4 Erase button EEN 29 4 3 3 2 5 Drive S progress bar 29 4 3 3 2 6 EIERE 30 17 re tests E E 31 4 4 1 Tab color and overall Progress ENEE 31 EE OG EEE 32 TL NVES 32 4 4 2 2 Running tests RK eener DE ER 4 5 Input lee WE 33 4 5 1 Tab color and overall Progress ENEE 33 EE OG EEE EEE NE 33 4 5 2 1 Customer amp Operator information ENEE 34 Toa GO e 34 4 5 2 3 Update button r rarsersvarnvrnnavsvrnnannvennannvennannvennavnvennavnvennavnvennnvevennnvevennnvene 35 TG DN NG 36 4 6 1 Tab color and overall Progress NENNEN 36 46 2 WOK IEA EE E EFREN ENTE Er E 37 4 6 2 1 REDOM COMON EE 37 4 6 2 2 ee 37 21025 Skee 39 4 7 SSE Nr 40 BT ON 41 Dr EON 41 0 EEE GE EE dete d edeegeaedeaeecceden 41 SC blancco 6 82 ENG 41 CR E de Le Ce EEE E 41 T EE ere rrr rer errr errr terre 41 Dlg SCAG E 42 5 2 FETE 42 SL NNN 42 See MN EE 42 Bio ACCESSING NE Process Ehsan 42 5 4 Navigation inside the Work area arnrrarnrnnrnrnnnnrnnnnnnrnnnnnnrnnnnnnrnnnnnnrnnnnnnnnn
22. Currently Blancco 5 supports dismantling of MegaRAID controllers branded by LSI SAS and SATA drives can be erased and Dell only SAS drives can be erased SATA drives connected to this controller are presently detected but cannot be erased Support of other brands mainly HP and Intel should be checked case by case ue SS blancco 56 82 8 HARDWARE TESTS The Blancco 5 contains tests designed to test the hardware of the machine The tests are divided into two categories Automatic tests and Manual tests The hardware tests have three possible end results Successful Failed and Not Performed To configure which tests are run or available use the BSCT 8 1 Automatic tests Automatic tests are run automatically during the software s loading process No user interaction is required 8 1 1 Battery The battery test checks the charge capacity of all the batteries connected to the machine The current charge capacity is compared to the maximum charge capacity stated by the manufacturer A brand new battery would have a charge capacity which is very close to 100 Really old battery which can t hold a charge anymore would have a really low charge capacity close to 0 The current charge state of the battery does not affect the charge capacity percentage The same battery will get the same result whether it is charged full or empty The test of the charge capacity percentage is the following e if the charge capacity percentage is 80
23. Example 1 VBOX HARDDISK 4 3 GB Vbed6ccd6e Select sector 100 8388607 Hexadecimal data for sector X on disk disk name and size Left column 48 69 21 00 AA Right column Hi Horizontal slider see bee blancco O 8388607 cde E Description Dropdown list displaying all detected drives used to select the storage media to hex view Each drive is identified with its number vendor and model capacity and serial number Sector being viewed currently displayed against the total amount of sectors of the drive Typing a sector number and pressing the Enter key will show the sector in question Note that the first sector is numbered 0 i e a drive with 100 sectors will have sectors in the range 0 99 The left side of the Hexviewer displays the sector s data in hexadecimal format If the sector size is 512 bytes the left side will be a 32 x 16 matrix The right side of the Hexviewer displays the sector s data in ASCII format If the sector size is 512 bytes the left side will be a 32 x 16 matrix Non printable ASCII chars and non ASCII chars are represented by a dot Used to scroll through different sectors Whenever dragged with the mouse or moved with the Arrow keys it will jump several sectors forward backward a jump equivalent to roughly 1 of the drive s 16 82 total amount of sectors First button Moves to and displays the first sector of the drive Previous button Mov
24. LLBACK standard hasa This icon is displayed in case the drive does not fully support the erasure standard but the fallback latter offers a fallback e E g selecting an erasure standard that possesses a firmware based erasure step that can fall back to a normal overwriting during the erasure process 4 4 Hardware tests step The Hardware tests step is the second defined default step When clicking on this step the user can see in the work area all the hardware tests available This step can be disabled from the B5CT 4 4 1 Tab color and overall progress The Hardware tests step tab s color informs of the overall hardware test progress not started gray ongoing blue successful green failed red Information about the number of tests Ongoing and their status is also written under the Hardware tests tab 2 Hardware tests Hardware tests tab manual tests not started Hardware tests tab tests ongoing Testis ongoing Testis successful Hardware tests tab all tests successful Hardware tests tab at least one test has failed Bee Bde SS blancco 31 82 4 4 2 Work area The list of available hardware tests and their current states are visible in the work area Process Manual Hardware tests v Device Result META a Battery Successful 100 CPU Successful 2 Hardware tests kal Memory Successful s Motherboard Successful AE ZA F Display Not performed 4 Report v gt Pointer d
25. alue 1 value 2 value 3 For more information refer to the B5CT user manual 4 5 2 3 Update button This button is used to validate all changes After pressing it e All filled in information will appear in all reports Report tab PDF XML e The fields that are left empty will be filtered out from the general reports Report tab PDF but will be visible in the detailed XML report ue SS blancco 35 82 4 6 Report sten The Report step is the fourth and final defined default step In this step the report can be viewed before during and after the erasure 4 6 1 Tab color and overall progress The Report step tab s color informs of the overall report backing up progress not started gray ongoing blue successful green failed red The report can be saved sent or both sent and saved Information about the saving sending status is also written under the Report tab 3 Report Saving report Sending report Saving successful Sending successful Saving failed Sending failed ue SS blancco Report tab report can be viewed but has not yet been backed up Report tab report is being saved Report tab report is being sent Report tab report was successtully saved Report tab report was successfully sent Report tab saving the report was unsuccessful Report tab sending the report was unsuccessful 36 82 4 6 2 Wo
26. ancco 76 82 SSD models that consistently fail erasure could benefit from a firmware update to improve the robustness of their internal operations Blancco has provided some information on how to access the firmware upgrade procedures for various manufacturers The details can be found at http www blancco com ssdinfo 1 Blancco is not in a position to guarantee the success or otherwise of firmware updates There is also no certainty that this will improve the result of erasure ue SS blancco 77 82 11 APPENDIX 2 EXECUTION STEPS OF THE ERASURE STANDARDS depends on the value user has given See chapter on Verification for more info ESE Enhanced Secure Erase SE Secure Erase FU Format Unit gt fallback procedure 11 1 Magnetic standards HMG Infosec Standard 5 Lower Standard Step Overwrite with 0x00 1 HMG Infosec Standard 5 Higher Standard Overwrite with OxAA Overwrite with 0x55 Overwrite with random byte Verify data DoD 5220 22 M Overwrite with 0x55 Overwrite with OxAA Overwrite with random byte Verify data DoD 5220 22 M ECE Overwrite with 0x55 Overwrite with OxAA Overwrite with random byte Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with 0x55 Overwrite with OxAA Overwrite with random byte Verify data Bruce Schneier s Algorithm Overwrite with OxFF Overwrite with 0x00 Overwrite with aperiodic random data ue gt blancco 78 82 Overwrite with aperiodic random data
27. and will generate error popups If the optical drive doesn t have write capability then only the reading test can be performed with a disc containing the Blancco pattern The CD or DVD images for Blancco pattern can be downloaded from the following locations http download blancco com Test media Test CD for HW Test zip http download blancco com Test media Test DVD for HW Test zip When starting the test the initializing of the test may take depending on the hardware up to few minutes Initializing writing test If the tests attempted on an optical drive are complete and OK the test status will be Successful If the attempted tests are complete but errors have been found the test status will be Failed Skipping completely the optical drive test or in case the test cannot be run e g the optical drive tray is open the inserted disk is R when attempting the writing test will leave the test result as Not performed ue SS blancco 63 82 9 TROUBLESHOOTING Below are listed several solutions and workarounds for problems that users may face Please visit the webpage support blancco com for submitting tickets and consulting the knowledge base for more solutions and recommendations 9 1 Burning the iso image Creating the CD Dragging and dropping the file onto the CD R or CD RW is NOT possible An ISO file is an image file which contains many smaller files that must be extracted to the CD at the time of burning By per
28. area The address remains the same but the owner is changed The remapped sector may contain some of the user s data Blancco 5 can activate internal drive commands that are capable of erasing the remapped sectors Assuming that the drive possesses the proper internal command the remapped sectors erasure can be selected along with any erasure standard that Blancco 5 supports Erasing remapped sectors can be a time consuming process depending on the drive size and speed When selecting the checkbox Erase remapped sectors and attempting to erase a drive the following actions will follow o An extra step running a specific firmware based erasure is added to the selected erasure standard only in case o the drive has at least one remapped sector o the erasure standard does not include any firmware based erasure step o This additional step is capable of erasing the remapped sectors but is merely optional if this extra step fails it will not fail the whole erasure process which will continue nevertheless For more information about the erasure status see Erasure status and exceptions Note Assuming that the drive possesses the proper internal command the erasure standards Extended Firmware based erasure BSI GS E NIST 800 88 Purge ATA and Blancco SSD Erasure include de facto a remapped sector erasure ue SS blancco 49 82 Warning Erasing the remapped sectors can also result in erasing any hidden area existing in the drive Be ca
29. ays to proceed a With some old machines the Freeze lock removal process may be paused because the machine has not got enough time to restart Try to push the machine s power button for 1 second or so to wake up the machine and restart the Blancco GUI begin the erasure after this you may end up with a working screen or in the case I or II b If the previous does not work the Freeze lock removal process has likely failed Next try to remove the drive from the machine and connect it to a motherboard that doesn t enforce Freeze lock as the Freeze lock itself is an entirely BIOS dependent feature c Otherwise unplug either the signal or power cable of the drive This requires that the following steps are performed 1 Shut down the computer system 2 Unplug the signal cable or four wire power cable of the drive while leaving the signal cable plugged in i To eliminate the danger of Electro Static Discharge always ground yourself when removing the power cord 3 Power on the system and boot the Blancco software 4 When the software is loading i e you see the progress bar plug the signal power cord of the drive back in The signal cable is the preferred option and should be attempted first If the freeze lock remains after attempting the boot with signal cable removed attempt the boot with the power cord removed This method is not recommended by Blancco as the drive may result damaged in the process Note Keep in mi
30. booted Dell Latitude F2 on boot Dell Optiplex DEL Dell Optiplex F2 Dell Precision F2 eMachine DEL Hee SC blancco 64 82 Gateway 2000 1440 F1 Gateway 2000 Solo F2 HP Hewlett Packard F1 F2 IBM F1 IBM E pro Laptop F2 IBM PS 2 CTRL ALT INS after CTRL ALT DEL IBM Thinkpad newer Windows Start Programs Thinkpad CFG Intel Tangent DEL Micron F1 F2 or DEL Packard Bell F1 F2 DEL Sony VIAO F2 F2 Tiger DEL Toshiba 335 CDS ESC Toshiba Protege ESC Toshiba Satellite 205 CDS F1 Toshiba Tecra F1 or ESC 9 3 Booting on machines with low RAM less than 1 GB If the displayed GUI appears white and broken after Blancco 5 has booted it can be due to the machine s RAM being fully consumed One way to proceed is to reboot go to the BIOS settings and lower the memory assigned to the graphical card Blancco 5 s GUI should be displayed correctly afterwards In some occasions the GUI may appear too big for the screen but it is still workable Other considerations when using Blancco 5 on machines with low RAM e Once the GUI has loaded if the machine has more than 1 drive erasing 1 drive at a time is Safer e Do not run the Hardware tests or the Hexviewer during the erasure Either run them before or after the erasure 9 4 Booting on machines with UEFI Blancco 5 may face some issues when booting on machines that use EFI UEFI The B5 UEFI support available from 5 4 x versions requir
31. but it can be updated after the erasure in particular if the erasure standard includes a firmware based erasure step Bad sectors ERRORS 4 count This icon will appear if bad sectors read and write errors are detected on the drive The number displayed after the Errors string is the number of read and write errors occurring during the erasure The number of errors can change during the erasure as it is detected in real time Hidden areas HPA DEO These icons will appear if hidden areas are detected on the drive The possible hidden areas are DCO HPA or both The detected hidden areas info can change after the erasure as they are first detected before age Bde SS blancco 30 82 the erasure takes place but they may be removed during the erasure and not be displayed after it Password PASSWORD protected drive This icon is displayed when the drive is password protected Blancco 5 cannot erase password protected drives To remove the password protection from the drive see the documentation of the drive in question or contact the drive manufacturer Erasure option COE Is not This icon is displayed in case the drive does not support at least one of the erasure options supported e E g selecting an erasure standard that enforces a firmware based erasure while the drive doesn t support it e E g selecting the Erase remapped sectors option while the drive doesn t implement commands to do it Erasure FA
32. celed If the erasure has been canceled by the user the cancel button is only available from the Advanced view If the erasure has failed due to e g read write errors during the erasure 4 3 3 2 Advanced view This view is accessed via the Advanced button In this view the user can individually select or group the drives for erasure The erasure method or standard the user wants to use whether or not the remapped sectors are erased from the drive as well as the level of the verification which is done during or after the erasure can also be defined individually or per group By clicking Erase the software starts the erasure process for all of the selected drives The progress bar and time remaining indicator show how long it takes before the process completes All the drives connected and running in the computer are shown in the view Please check that the drives have been correctly identified The drive information available in the GUI is Number of drives Vendor Model vendor or the model of the drive Type connection type SATA SPI SSD Size size of the drive in GB Serial number serial number of the drive Bee Bde SS blancco 27 82 Process Manual Number of drives 3 E Vendor Model 1 Erasure nt v 1 VBOX HARDDISK IDE 2 Hardware tests v 2 VBOX HARDDISK SATA vi 3 VBOX HARDDISK SATA Erasure options ure standard HMG Infosec Standard 5 Lowe
33. d erasure information This report is the unique proof that the erasure has been initialized and completed which makes it extremely valuable The report is divided into the following categories Licensee Customer Operator information info about the owner of the Blancco license the owner of the erased machines and the operator executing the erasure Custom fields information customized by the user operator Erasure result information detailed information about the erasure results per erased drive Hardware information asset report about the host machine Hardware test results results of the hardware tests Report information detailed information about the report file itself 4 6 2 2 Save button The save button is used to save the report to an external physical media such as a USB stick te SS blancco 37 82 Plug your external device USB stick into the machine then press the Save button The following window is shown Save report s Drive KINGSTON Alename 20130226 085808 report Format xml Overwrite file Save Cancel e Choose the desired media from the Drive list e The name of the report file is displayed on the Filename field The default name of the report follows the format Date yyyymmdd Time hh24miss report o A report named 20130211 235808 report was created the 11 of February 2013 at 11 58 08 PM o This name can eventually be changed before saving the report to t
34. ding Context Explanation What to do Your image is set to consume You have connected your HASP Starting an erasure will refresh the licenses from the HASP dongle dongle after Blancco 5 has booted amount of licenses Licenses in the Header area are Licenses are not automatically not available refreshed in the GUI Your image is set to consume Your communication settings IP Try checking filling in again your licenses from the BMC port MCuser MCpassword may be communication settings Licenses in the Header area are wrong Starting an erasure will refresh the POS amount of licenses Your image is set to consume The amount of asset licenses in Contact Blancco to get asset licenses from the BMC the HASP dongle connected to the licenses Attempting to send an asset report BMC is either 0 or the asset licenses pops the message Report sending validity date has expired failed network problem BMC is not Hes Bde SS blancco 72 82 responding or wrong communication settings The network is working the BMC is running and your communication settings are fine You have enough licenses and have performed some erasures Attempting a new erasure pops the message Not enough licenses to start erasure You are trying to erase some drives You get the message Failed to start erasure on some of the disks and the erasure does not start Bee Bde Go blancco Yo
35. disabled when pressed during the test Pressing these keys also tests the keyboard LEDs assigned to these buttons Please make sure that they are in a convenient position once the test has finished The Function key Fn is also enabled disabled when pressed during the test This key does not usually trigger the keyboard s background flashing but its use may be needed to activate e g the Num Lock button or to emulate a full sized keyboard with numpad Please make sure that it is in a convenient position once the test has finished To exit and end the test the Escape key must be pressed twice Examples of the test at the start and after some keys have been pressed blancco blancco The test has ended the user can add extra info on the text field and pass the test Successful status or fail it Failed status by pressing Yes or No from the dialog window Keyboard test Did the keyboard work correctly Closing the window without pressing Yes or No will leave the test with the status Not performec og 8 2 4 PC speaker The system produces beep sounds from the PC speaker After this the user is asked to confirm whether the sounds were heard or not To exit the test before the test s end the Escape key must be pressed SS blancco 61 82 Example of the test being run and the beeps being played G TT The test has ended the user can add extra info on the text field and pass the test Succes
36. e hidden usually the flash part of the hybrid no guarantees can be provided against recovery of data using laboratory techniques The erasure of a hybrid drive will protect against non invasive attacks at a software level only since the memory management of data is performed internally by the drive Additionally there is not enough research available to suggest that firmware erasure methods such as ATA Secure Erase will address both parts of the storage and it is not possible to verify this without the appropriate tools Therefore the same applies as above for this process assurances can be given about the accessible part of the storage only 7 15 3 RAID controllers connected to SAS SATA drives Blancco 5 Server can detect and erase SAS and SATA drives connected to RAID controllers Erasing these drives in this kind of environment can be challenging for several reasons two important ones being communication issues and RAID firmware customizations Erasure of SATA drives is more challenging than erasure of SAS drives because when connecting SATA drives to a SAS enclosure different setups can add extra layers to the communication between the software and the disk The MegaRAID controllers in particular can be purchased by different original equipment manufacturers OEM or brands which can resell them with their own customized firmware the support of the MegaRAID depends heavily on the firmware that has been embedded into the controller
37. eave the test with the status Not performed Yes 8 2 3 Keyboard The keyboard test is used to test the functionality of the keyboard The keyboard layout is shown on the screen There are two layouts currently available US United States standard layout JP Japanese this layout is displayed only when the keyboard layout has been set to Japanese Japan jp When pressing a key the color of the corresponding key in the screen changes from red default key is not pressed yet to yellow key is pressed to green key is released If the color stays yellow then the key is probably stuck If the color stays red and there is no indication in the screen that a key is being pressed then the key may not be working Testing non standard extra keys Some keys such as the Windows Command keys the Alt Gr key as well as some keys available in Japanese keyboards are not properly mapped to their corresponding key in the screen Due to this these non standard keys remain red although it does not mean that they are not working On the other hand when any key of the keyboard is pressed the background of the keyboard image displayed in the screen flashes from white to grey during the key press SS blancco 60 82 This is presently the best way to verify whether the non standard extra keys are working or not Testing the Lock keys and the Function key The Lock keys Scroll Lock Caps Lock and Num Lock are enabled
38. enses these licenses are necessary to erase drives Consuming one erasure license allows the user to save send reports Asset licenses in case there are no Erasure licenses or if the user hasnt erased any drive these licenses are necessary to save or send a report with all the hardware information of the machine asset report Blancco 5 license control is done either from a local HASP dongle or from the BMC via the network There must be enough licenses in order to start the erasure or save send an asset report If the license container cannot be reached the following messages will be displayed Erasure licenses not available Asset licenses not available 3 2 Hexviewer function button The Hexviewer is used to check the content of a storage media in hexadecimal format Whenever a drive is overwritten with Blancco 5 a pattern either static or random is used to overwrite it the hex format of this pattern e g 0x00 OxAA 0x924924 can be viewed with the Hexviewer thus providing a visual verification of the performed erasure result Fa a Hee wet ue SS blancco 15 82 Hexviewer Drive and sector Select drive 1 VBOX HARDDISK 4 3 GB VB select sector Hexadecimal data for sector 0 on disk VBOX HARDDISK 4 3 GB Offset 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c de E 012345 6 7 8 9 a 000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 010 040 First Previous Next Name Drive and sector Select drive
39. es some mandatory conditions e Booting from a CD does not work properly prefer instead booting with a bootable USB stick previously formatted with Blancco USB Creator o The USB Creator version has to be at least the 2 1 0 58 or newer e The UEFI machine where Blancco 5 is booted has to be an x86 and 64 bit processor Blancco 5 UEFI infrastructure is 64 bit o B5 cannot presently boot on nor erase 32 bit UEFI machines 9 4 1 Disabling the Secure Boot Any PC with a Windows 8 logo sticker has a Secure boot enabled by default Secure boot is an UEFI feature that can make Windows 8 very resistant to low level malware such as rootkits Blancco 5 may not properly boot on a machine where the Secure Boot is enabled in which case this feature has to be manually disabled ue SS blancco 65 82 The following steps will demonstrate how to enable or disable the Secure Boot in the PC s UEFI settings 9 4 1 1 General steps 1 Boot to UEFI Firmware Settings 2 In the motherboard s UEFI firmware settings go to the Security Authentication or similar menu select the Secure Boot option and disable it 3 Exit the menu and select Save Changes and Exit This reboots the machine Secure Boot can be enabled again following the same logical steps 9 4 1 2 Windows Surface Pro 1 Plug in a USB keyboard to the device Power on the device and let it boot to the Windows login screen 3 Press the power icon on the bottom right corner of the sc
40. es to and displays the previous sector Next button Moves to and displays the next sector Last button Moves to and displays the last sector of the drive The Hexviewer can also be used to read the Digital Fingerprint information please check chapter Digital Fingerprint for more information 3 3 Settings function button The Blancco 5 settings are accessed via the Settings button Settings Pressing the button opens the Settings window The Settings window has two tabs The General tab contains information related to the User Interface and screensaver r a settings User interface settings Language English Keyboard layout English United States us Screensaver settings Enable screensaver Timeout Sec Example Description User Interface settings Language English en The language used in the software Keyboard Layout English United Keyboard layout used in the system States us Screensaver Settings Enable screensaver On or Off Enable disable the screensaver Timeout sec Timeout of the screensaver in seconds time of 30 inactivity before the screensaver is turned on Possible values from 5 sec to 86400 sec 1 day Hee L SS blancco 17 82 The Management Console tab contains information related to BMC connectivity and proxy settings Settings s General Management Console Communication settings Hostname IP tert Username Proxy settings Hostname IF
41. evice Not performed v gt Keyboard Not performed v gt PC speaker Not performed w i e Optical drive CD ROM Not performed v Read vi e Optical drive CD ROM Vv Write Read Y Blank Not performed innotek GmbH VirtualBox Genuinelntel Intel R Core TM 17 4510U CPU 2 00GHz 2 5 GHz CPUO 1008 MB RAM 4 4 2 1 Available tests Detailed information about each test is found in the chapter Hardware tests 4 4 2 2 Running tests Test button There are two ways to run the tests 1 Individually by clicking on the run button on the left side of the test s name In group by selecting tests via the check boxes on left side of their names then clicking on the Test button which is located on the bottom right of the screen or pressing the Ctrl T combination This will run all selected tests serially On the right side of the tests names are their current state in the Results column The state can be e Successful The test was run and the tested hardware worked correctly e Failed The test was run and the tested hardware didn t work correctly e Not performed The test has not yet been run SS blancco 32 82 4 5 Input amp edit step The Input amp edit step is the third defined default step In this step the erasure report can be edited before during and after the erasure 4 5 1 Tab color and overall progress The Input amp edit step tab s color informs of the overal
42. forming the burn process properly the ISO image will create a possibility to boot your computer from the CD ImgBurn How to Burn ISO Recorder Recording ISO files 9 2 Accessing the BIOS and changing the boot sequence In order to boot the Blancco software set the used device USB CD Network booting as the first booting device To change the boot sequence you must enter the Setup or CMOS Setup on your computer and change the booting sequence to use the USB drive CD drive Network adapter first There are several ways to enter the setup depending on your computer manufacturer and model During the booting stage a message will appear stating Press DEL to enter Setup As the message flashes only once on the screen you must be quick to press the key before the boot sequence continues Please note that the boot sequence may continue without any user intervention The Delete Key and F2 are the two most common keys We have collected some of the key combinations in order to get into the BIOS On most systems you need to press these keys repeatedly during the POST Power On Self Test as soon as the computer has been turned on If the Windows Logo appears you are too late restart the computer and try again Computer Model BIOS Keys AcerQ F1 F2 CTRL ALT ESC AST CTRL ALT ESC CTRL ALT DEL Compaq 8700 F10 CompUSA DEL CybermaxQ ESC Dell 400 F3 F1 Dell Dimension F2 or DEL Dell Inspiron F2 Dell Latitude Fn F1 while
43. g out the erasure These field names are static and cannot be added removed or modified However their default values can be predefined with the B5CT and or edited in Blancco 5 Description Customer name Name of the company which owns the Example Company machines to erase can be different than the Licensee Customer location Location address of the aforementioned Anytown customer Erasure provider The company using the tool and Erasure Company s name performing the erasure can be different than the Licensee and the Customer Erasure technician The person performing the erasure Erasure Company s employee process 4 5 2 2 Custom fields Custom fields are usually created and filled in by the Operator i e the person or company that carries out the drives erasure There are two types of custom fields normal entry fields values are input freely dropdown lists values are predefined and can be picked SS blancco 34 82 Custom fields are created with the B5CT The user can customize them e By giving them any name he she wants e By filling them in with any default value e By setting them as normal or mandatory fields the latter are marked with a little Sign report can t be sent saved until those fields have been filled e Examples of custom fields names Asset ID Asset type Asset value Destroy asset Custom fields Custom 1 Custom 2 Mandatory field 4 Custom dropdown v
44. h 0x00 For SCSI drive FU gt Overwrite with 0x00 Verify data pattern verification 11 3 SSD Standards Blancco SSD Erasure ATA Proprietary process L Contact Blancco for more information Bee Bde gt blancco 81 82 12 CONTACT INFORMATION Visit the technical knowledgebase FAQ and contact Blancco Technical Support by submitting a technical support ticket at http support blancco com See the instructional videos for Blancco products at http www blancco com en videos For contact information and the latest information about secure data erasure solutions visit the Blancco website at http www blancco com We are always looking for ways to improve our products Please let us know if you have any Suggestions ue SS blancco 82 82
45. he external media e Choose the report format from the Format list Possible report formats are o XML report created with an XML extension can be imported to the BMC o PDF report created with a PDF extension can be printed but cannot be imported to the BMC o XML PDF two reports are created one as a PDF file and other one as a XML file e Press Save to save the report or Cancel to exit this window If the saving was successful then the following pop up is shown Report saving Report saved successfully If the report saving fails an error pop up is shown This error can occur for numerous reasons the most common ones being there is not enough free space on the external device the external device has been disconnected SS blancco 38 82 a report file with the same name already exists in the external device the report s name contains invalid characters the external device is faulty and data cannot be written on it Report saving Report saving failed Not enough free space to save the report Note The external USB device must have a valid volume label If the external device does not have a valid volume label it will not be shown on the Save report dialog Note When saving a report on a USB stick the name of the USB stick itself has to be valid For the name to be valid it has to follow these rules e The name must be without special chars lt gt e The name cannot
46. his tool allows to preconfigure the Blancco 5 behavior localization settings process erasure standard security features custom fields Blancco Management Console 3 this tool allows to store all erasure reports the reports can be either sent via the network or imported from an external device The Blancco Management Console 3 can also control remotely the Blancco 5 client via a network connection Blancco USB Creator this tool can format and make bootable any USB stick such devices can then store several Blancco 5 ISO images providing a good alternative to CD booting For more information about these tools please contact the Blancco Support at http support blancco com Graphical User Interface presentation The Blancco 5 GUI is divided into three main areas e ET the s Process Num komet e Dee Serw samer Cancel 3 6 Shutdown function button In order to shut down the machine after a successful erasure click on the Shutdown button Fi W Shutdown ue SS blancco 20 82 After pressing the button a confirmation popup window will appear Confirm that you really wish to shut down the machine by clicking on Shut down The machine then powers off Shutdown Do you want to shut down the computer Shut down Cancel ue SS blancco 21 82 4 PROCESS AND WORK AREAS 4 1 Processes Processes define how the erasure process is handled and how much user interaction it requires All
47. ia the B5CT ue SS blancco 44 82 blancco The only exception that is not notified is the purely informative message Device is SSD see manual for more information which is always displayed when an SSD is successfully erased with Blancco SSD Erasure 6 3 Remote erasure When Blancco 5 is being remotely controlled by the BMC the remote control has to be activated from the B5CT the following screen will be shown WT 1 e REMOTE ERASURE Thee computes io Deine ferretnty erased When the erasure is started the screen will look like in the screenshot below The main difference with the normal erasure screensaver is the text over the erasure percentage number and the BMC identifier number on the top right corner of the screen ue SS blancco 45 82 8 blancco REMOTE ERASURE This computer is being remotely erased Please do not shut it down unless you are certain the process has been 89 If the remote erasure has been successfully completed the following screen will be shown blancco E 4 E e REMOTE ERASURE This computer is being remotely erased Please do not shut it down unless you are certain the process hes b completed If the remote erasure has failed the following screen will be shown 23 his compute gt not shut t down unless you are certain the process has been completed REMOTE ERASURE ue SS blancco 46 82 7 BLANCCO 5 SECURITY FEATURES
48. ic nature about the hardware to provide additional possibilities for data recovery LAN A local area network LAN is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area LUN Logical Unit Number is the identifier of a SCSI logical unit and by extension of a Fibre Channel or iSCSI logical unit A logical unit is a SCSI protocol entity which performs classic storage operations such as read and write Non invasive data An attempt to retrieve data from a storage device using software means only and recovery without the application of physical equipment A typical example is the use of readily available software to recover data from a storage device that is connected to a computer via the normal interface mechanism e g SATA and addressed using standard commands OS Operating System or OS is a set of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs It is a vital component of the system software programs require an OS to function PXE The Preboot eXecution Environment is an environment to boot computers using a network interface independently of data storage devices or installed operating systems RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks is a technology that provides increased storage reliability through redundancy combining multiple disk drive components into a logical unit where all drives in the array are interdependent Remapped Reallocated Count of realloca
49. in45s The following icons are shown under the Erasure tab when erasures are in different states All erasures have been successful At least one erasure was canceled by the user This overrules the successful icon At least one erasure has been paused by the user This overrules the canceled icon At least one erasure has failed This overrules the paused icon If there are multiple drives in different states then the erasure tab may look like the next picture 2 disk s being erased 1 diskis being paused 2 diskis erased succesfully 1 diskis erasure canceled 1 diskis erasure failed 4 min 335 4 3 3 Work area More specific functionality and information is shown in the work area Most of the physical interaction with the software is done in this area age Bde SS blancco 24 82 In the top right of the Work area there is a single button that allows changing between two views the Standard view and Advanced view from the Standard view default view the user will be able to access the Advanced view by clicking this button Advanced from the Advanced view the user will be able to access the Standard view by clicking this button Standard These views affect how much data is shown and how much control the user has over the work area 4 3 3 1 Standard view This view is accessed via the Standard button In this view the user only has the ability to start
50. ing F10 is similar to pushing the Shutdown button opens the Shutdown popup 5 3 Accessing the Process area The steps of the Process area are accessed exclusively with the key combinations Ctrl key Number keys 1 2 3 e Ctrl 1 selects the first step that is defined and visible e Ctrl 2 selects the second step that is defined and visible e Ctrl 3 selects the third step that is defined and visible e Ctrl 4 selects the fourth step that is defined and visible These buttons might differ depending on the configuration of the software The logic always follows the same formula the first step is accessed with Ctrl 1 the second step is Ctrl 2 etc Bee Bde SS blancco 42 82 5 4 Navigation inside the Work area 5 4 1 Erasure step The drives erasure options and the Erase button can be accessed with the Tab key and the Arrow keys but this step has also few key combinations 5 4 1 1 Ctrl M This key combination switches between Standard amp Advanced views modes 5 4 1 2 Ctrl E This key combination pushes the Erase button starts the erasure 5 4 1 3 Ctrl A When in the Advanced view this key combination selects all drives for erasure 5 4 2 Hardware tests step The test checkboxes and buttons can be accessed with the Tab key 5 4 2 1 Ctrl T This key combination activates the execution of marked tests 5 4 3 Input amp edit step The fields and the Update button are accessed exc
51. irements must be met 1 The process has to be set as Manual Default erasure process this can also be configured via the B5CT 2 The Blancco 5 image has to be remotely controlled via the BMC 3 and the correct communication settings have to be in place This can be configured via the B5CT erasure control Blancco Management Console remote communication settings filled in If the communication settings are not correct Blancco 5 will run but it will not be able to receive any orders from the BMC 3 The BMC 3 can start the erasure remotely monitor it and fetch the erasure report in the end Any other configuration will result in a non functional Blancco 5 image In case the booting is done via USB stick the line splashimage syslinux blancco xopm has to be removed from the menu lst file on the bootable usb sticks root Otherwise the USB booting will not work ue SS blancco 67 82 9 8 Booting on Apple computers Blancco 5 can boot Mac laptops and workstations although the success of the procedure depends on the Mac model and involves several tricks e Check the startup key combinations for Intel based Macs http support apple com kb HT1533 In particular verify whether your Mac possesses a Startup manager http support apple com kb HT1310 available on recent models e The Mac EFI firmware is not able to boot PXE natively e Blancco 5 can be booted on Macs using a bootable USB stick see this chapter on B
52. is pressed a confirmation window is shown with two options Pressing Yes continues to the erasure Pressing No exits the window and does not start the erasure The lower part of the confirmation window has a URL that opens a window containing a copy of the Blancco EULA End User License Agreement The EULA can also be read from the Internet at the following URL http www blancco com en eula END USER LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS EULA English is the official language of this EULA If there is a conflict between original English EULA available at http www blancco com fenfeula and translated EULA the online copy of the EULA shall prevail Blancco Erasure Client XXX sold for example under such product Are YOu su re names as Blancco 5 and Blancco PC Edition Product The Product er ae shall also refer to any updates thereto supplied by Blancco from time Warning Blancco software erases all to time to any of its data erasure software data fram the hard disk s and partition s Do YOLI want to continue PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR USE OF THE PRODUCT WILL RESULT IN THE ERASURE OF ALL OR SPESIFIED DATA AND FILES IN YOUR HARD DRIVE PRODUCT VERSION IS BEING USED AND THAT YOU SHALL HAVE SOLE ge eiss EE Ce AND EXCLUSIVE RESPONSIBILITY FOR BACKING UP YOUR DATA IN YOUR pe TE eee HARD DRIVE SYSTEM STORAGE OR DEVICE BLANCCO SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOSS OF DATA Blancco Oy Ltd Blancco and
53. ith Blancco as only the booting of the machine is required to view this report however it does not replace the Blancco erasure report which is the real proof that the erasure has occurred It can also be used for auditing an erasure report Another use is displaying the hardware information of a machine that is meant to be sold on the second hand market To activate the Bootable Asset report the following conditions need to be fulfilled e The Bootable Asset report has to be enabled from the B5CT e All detected drives have to be erased successfully at least once e The erasure report has to be saved on a USB stick or sent to the BMC at least once 7 13 Erasure standard switch for SSDs Blancco 5 can detect ATA SSDs and use for these specific drives an appropriate erasure standard instead of the preconfigured erasure standard Whenever Blancco 5 detects one or more ATA SSDs the following steps are taken 1 For each ATA SSD the default erasure standard is switched to the Blancco SSD Erasure ATA standard 2 All other drives which are not ATA SSDs are unaffected erased with the default erasure standard This functionality can be enabled disabled via the B5CT 7 14 Erasing RAID configurations Blancco 5 Server has a RAID dismantling capability that can break the RAID and access directly the physical hard drives for erasure This capability is disabled by default but can be enabled via the BSCT Below the list of the RAID cont
54. its licensors retain all right title and interest including intellectual property rights in and to the Product and related documentation Use of the Product and related documentation is governed by these Terms and Conditions and applicable copyright Close Warning If a drive has a Freeze lock Blancco 5 can attempt to remove it in such case the screen may momentarily turn off but should resume after few seconds Please be patient and wait for the screen to resume For more information about Freeze lock see the chapter Freeze lock 4 3 3 1 2 Drive s progress bar The erasure progress of each individual drive can be monitored via a progress bar which displays the erasure state erasure standard and erasure percentage ue SS blancco 26 82 Not started Ongoing Paused Finished Canceled Failed In this state the erasure has not been started or the selected drive is not active Bruce Schneier s Algorithm 71 43 In this state the erasure process is being performed The progress is shown by the blue bar and the percentage of completion The erasure standard used for erasure is shown on the left side of the progress bar TT paused In this state the erasure has been paused by the user The erasure can be resumed by pressing the resume button or canceled by pressing the cancel button the pause resume buttons are only available in the Advanced view When the erasure has been successfully completed can
55. ives is locked the Freeze lock removal is attempted just before the erasure process the screen turns black for few seconds then restarts and the erasure begins see the Freeze lock This booting option works better than the first option in many most cases when Freeze lock removal procedure is needed 3 FLR during startup This is the default option The Freeze lock removal process is carried out during the booting phase before loading all the system drivers to increase the chances to wake up the machine after the freeze lock removal Then Blancco 5 is loaded using any available driver that corresponds to the graphical card of the machine The screen resolution is the native resolution of the machine 1024 768 or higher This booting option works better than the first option in many most cases when Freeze lock removal procedure is needed 4 Show startup messages This is the same option than the second one except that startup messages are shown in the screen instead of the animated loading screen This can be used as a troubleshooting measure for machines where Blancco 5 hangs during the booting phase 7 1 2 When to use the booting options Depending on the hardware where Blancco 5 is booted some issues may arise during the Freeze lock removal process performed by the default booting option FLR during startup such as ue SS blancco 47 82 screens staying black or unresponsive machines In these cases the suggested procedure is
56. l report editing progress not started gray ongoing blue successful green incorrect red Information about the update status is also written under the Input amp edit tab 2 Input amp edit 1 D Update pending Update successful Update failed 4 5 2 Work area Input amp edit tab report editing not started Input amp edit tab text has been filled into the fields but it is not yet validated Input amp edit tab fields have been filled in and validation Is successful Input amp edit tab validation Is not successful mandatory fields have been left empty The Customer details the Operator details as well as all the configured Custom fields are visible in the work area They can be filled in with your own Company s information to customize the final report Bee Bde SS blancco 33 82 Process Manual Customer details ustomer name catior ustomer 1 disk s being erased 2 disk s erased succesfully Operator details Erasure provider 8s Testis successful 3 Input amp edit Custom fields 4 Report innetek GmbH VirtualBox Genuinelntel Intel R CorelTM i7 4510U CPU 2 00GHz 2 5 GHz CPUO 1008 MB RAM 4 5 2 1 Customer amp Operator information These fields contain extra information that Is either related to the Customer i e the company the drives to erase come from Or is related to the Operator i e the company carryin
57. layed NEEN 72 9 14 Misleading messages rarnurnennnurnennnurnennnvrnennnvrnennnurnennnvrnennnvrnennnvenennnvrnennnvrvennnvrnennnvene 72 10 Appendix 1 SSD supplement arararsvravarnernnarnvrnnarnvrnnannvennannvennannvennannvennannvennavnvennannvenee 74 10 1 Guidelines for Using SSD Erasure Method uk 74 v2 FT R re 74 Uu a DEI TE 74 10 2 2 Failure re ef 74 10 3 Handling Information 75 Mo EN MEN ee ccc ert ect ste EEEE ce ate eee eee 75 10 3 2 Inoperable Drives uh 76 150 Filed BEN 76 11 Appendix 2 Execution steps of the erasure Standarde 78 HI Magnetic StanGardS Jen 78 11 2 Firmware and tele EE 80 11 3 SSD Standa rd E 81 12 Co ntact gt 0 E 82 blancco 9 82 1 GENERAL INFORMATION This manual Is written for the Blancco 5 family for x86 based computer architectures PLEASE CAREFULLY READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH BEFORE YOU START USING THE PROGRAM Thank you for choosing Blancco for your data erasure needs Before you start using the Blancco Erasure software make sure that all files folders software applications or any other information that you want to save for later use are backed up on an appropriate media device other than the original data storage device HDD SSD If you are not sure whether to erase the information on the drive please contact your system operator information management or a corresponding party which maintains the computers in your organization For future use of the erased computer an operating system
58. lusively with the Tab key 5 4 4 Report step The elements and the Save and Send buttons are accessed exclusively with the Tab key Use the Arrow keys to scroll the report content 5 5 Other controls Ctrl O opens ejects the CD tray Bee Bde SS blancco 43 82 6 SCREENSAVER Blancco 5 screensaver shows the current state of the erasure on the machine s monitor 6 1 Presentation The following information is displayed e The erasure progress bar e The overall percentage of erasure s e The overall time left to complete the erasure s The screensaver provides a good overview of the ongoing erasures and their final result whether successful green icon or failed canceled red icon The screensaver can be enabled disabled via the B5CT and from the Settings window The screensaver timeout in seconds can also be defined in the Settings window blancco All erasures finished successfully ep 63 Ongoing erasures At least one erasure failed or was canceled 6 2 Exception notifications If the erasures are successful but there has been at least one exception reported e g DCO area removal failed the screensaver will provide a notification of this by displaying a successful icon which color shifts between green and yellow This notification informs the user that there is something in the report that requires his attention The notification of erasure exceptions can only be enabled disabled v
59. ly in English language independently of the report language for compatibility with the ASCII characters The Fingerprint contains the following data Separated with spaces and semicolons Field name Description Customer name to field from the erasure report Note special characters non ASCII are displayed as chars Date amp time of erasure completion Displayed with the format yyyy mm dd hh mm ss Blancco software version e g Blancco 5 5 4 1 Drive serial number Also displayed in the Erasure step Erasure status Erased or Not Erased Erasure information message e g User canceled the erasure Note this message may be truncated in case the Fingerprint content is longer than 512 chars sector size Unique report ID Erasure report UUID Key ID Same than the erasure report s key id field Digital signature Encoded on 64 chars Similar to the erasure report s digital Signature but generated from the Fingerprint content itself ue SS blancco 53 82 The Digital Fingerprint is disabled by default Enabling it as well as setting its sector location is done via the B5CT 7 12 Bootable Asset Report The Bootable Asset Report is a small report containing the hardware information of the erased machine It is displayed as a static splash screen when a successfully erased machine is rebooted The Bootable Asset Report can provide a fast visual proof that the machine has been successfully erased w
60. n cancelled input is mandatory but nothing has been written in the input field or report sending saving has failed 2 4 5 Blue color Process or given task is running E g drive erasure process is running Ongoing erasures additional fields are being updated or sending saving report is still in progress 2 5 Popups for special drives If the computer has special drives connected in to it Blancco 5 will display one of the following popups depending on the type of the drive detected 2 5 1 ATA SSD This popup is displayed if the system has at least one ATA SSD connected to it SSD s detected Blancco 5 has detected ATA SSD drive s It is recommended to erase these drives with the Blancco SSD Erasure ATA standard ue SS blancco 13 82 2 5 2 SAS SSD This popup is displayed if the system has at least one SAS SSD connected to it read the chapter related to SAS SSD handling for more information Ba SSD s detected Blancco 5 has detected SAS SSD drives s Please see the manual for further information concerning the erasure of these drives ue SS blancco 14 82 3 HEADER AREA 3 1 Software version and license control Blancco 5 software version is located on the top left of the screen under the logo Information about the amount of remaining licenses is displayed below the software version number Erasure licenses 274 Asset licenses 99 Blancco 5 has two different license types Erasure lic
61. n external media device Problem description is mandatory because it explains the problem If you want to save an issue report on an external device USB stick first plug the media device into the machine then press the Report issue button The settings for saving the issue report consist of e Select media dropdown menu and select the appropriate media device USB stick to save the issue report e Issue Report Name field which defines the file name of the report The default name of the report follows the format Date yyyymmdd time hh24miss issue report o A report named 20121205 164206 issue report was created 5 of December 2012 at 4 42 06 PM o This name can eventually be changed before saving the issue report to the external media e The only available file format is XML it will automatically be added to the issue report name e Save button press this button to save the issue report on your external device USB stick The other available buttons in the window are e Send button for sending the issue report to the BMC This requires o A network connection and a server running the BMC o Correct Communication settings filled in the Settings window ue SS blancco 19 82 e Cancel button to cancel the issue report generation and exit the window Note When saving a report on a USB stick the name of the USB stick itself has to be valid For the name to be valid it has to follow these rules e The name mu
62. ncco 5 Server image is configured to remove the logical drives and access and erase the underlying physical drives you need to load your image in the B5CT and enable the capability from there B5CT gt Load the ISO image gt Security gt LOGICAL DISK gt Remove Detailed information on how to do this is provided in the B5CT user manual If after doing this change you still cannot access the physical drives the RAID controller is most likely not supported by Blancco 5 Server A workaround for this consists in dismantling manually the RAID configuration and rebooting Blancco 5 Server if you still cannot access the physical drives verify if the RAID controller supports the JBOD mode if yes set your RAID controller to this mode and reboot Blancco 5 Server Remember to check the knowledge base available at support blancco com it provides solutions and recommendations for handling this kind of situations 9 12 Erasing drives connected to the HP Smart Array controller 1 Problem description Some versions models of the HP Smart Array RAID controller have problems with the erasure verification it always fails regardless of erasure standard that end up in a failed process status Not erased information Verification failed X sector s failed to overwrite 2 Problem explanation This problem is related to one of the controller s settings called the surface scan delay This setting is the time interval before s
63. nd to always try the other Booting Options if you face any similar situation Warning Shutting down a machine when the drives are being erased with MIST 800 88 Purge ATA BSI GS E Extended Firmware based erasure Blancco SSD Erasure or any other standard with the Erase remapped sectors feature activated can damage the drives ue SS blancco 69 82 9 10 2 How to avoid the automatic Freeze Lock Removal Avoiding Blancco s Freeze Lock Removal can be useful if the following conditions are fulfilled e The drive has a freeze lock the machine does not restart after attempting the freeze lock removal screen stays black and the machine cannot be remotely erased e The drive is in a good condition no remapped sectors e The drive does not have any hidden area that needs to be removed e The drive does not contain sensitive data o Secret data often requires purging or sanitizing procedures that may involve the use of firmware based erasure commands which are available only if the drive is not Freeze Locked e The user essentially requires erasing the user addressable area of the drive How to avoid the Blancco s automatic Freeze Lock Removal procedure 1 Configure the Blancco 5 ISO image to preserve any existing hidden area e See the BSCT User Manual for more information on how to enable this option 2 Boot Blancco 5 with any available booting mode except the FLR during startup 3 Ensure that an erasure method that does
64. nless the DCO Is in freeze lock mode and the lock has not been removed Warning Drives that contain HPA and or DCO areas that have not been removed should not be erased with MIST 800 88 Purge ATA BSI GS E Extended Firmware based erasure Blancco SSD Erasure or any other standard with the Erase remapped sectors feature activated Using these options could end up erasing such areas ue SS blancco 51 82 7 8 Erasure verification The user of Blancco 5 can select the level of verification of the erasure The verification process reads data at identical intervals across the whole drive s surface and makes sure that the erasure s overwriting patterns were written correctly The minimum verification corresponds to checking 1 of the surface of the drive fast process while the full verification corresponds to checking 100 of the surface of the drive slower process Taking samples at identical intervals across the drive s surface can efficiently detect any problems in the erasure while being faster than reading all the overwritten data The user of Blancco 5 can increase the level of verification from the default 1 all the way up to 100 full verification when higher level of security is required If the verification finds any data left on the drive overwriting patterns are missing it will alert the user that the erasure process has failed A systematic verification step is always enforced after the last overwriting pass
65. nnecting them to a supported x86 processor based erasure station for erasure Blancco 5 cannot presently boot on nor erase 32 bit UEFI machines even if they are x86 processor based This is the case of e g several tablets using the Atom processor with a system on chip platform such as the Clover Trail platform 7 15 1 Unsupported drives Drives can be manufactured with different sector sizes Although drives with sector sizes of 512 bytes are the most popular traditional formatting some rare drives possess sectors with slightly bigger sizes of e g 520 bytes Newer drives use 4096 bytes sectors Advanced Format Blancco 5 supports drives with 512 bytes sector size Drives with e g 520 bytes sector size are currently not properly supported Drives with 4096 bytes sector size are supported if they offer a 512 byte emulation layer Advanced Format 512 emulation or 512e but they are not properly supported if they do not provide that emulation layer Advanced Format 4K native or 4Kn 7 15 2 SSDs Although Blancco 5 can identify and erase all kind of Hard Disk Drives where data is stored magnetically on rotating disks there are some caveats involved regarding the erasure of Solid State Drives SSD SSDs differ from HDDs in that data is stored electronically on transistor arrays Please refer to the chapter Guidelines for Using SSD Erasure Method for more information If the documentation does not help you please engage with y
66. nnnnrnnnnnunnnnene 43 5 4 1 SEI 0 EEE 43 ALL lt eee ee ee ee eee 43 SA d E og oe eee eee ere ener eee eee ee eee ene eee eee 43 AE 0 E 43 5 4 2 Hardware tests Step arnrrnrannnnnrnnnnnnvnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnunnnnnnennnnnuennnsne 43 DE DEE GE eg 43 Bo AMD GCOS EEN 43 DEE REPON STED EEE EE 43 SG ETON 43 EEE 44 NNN 44 6 2 Exception notifications NENNEN 44 db FANENE 45 7 Blancco 5 Security features NEE 47 Fil BONGO E 47 7 1 1 PETN 47 7 1 2 When to use the booting Options sek kkk REN KRN NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN AEN 47 2 SEN 44442444 48 7 3 Detecting DD SEE 48 7 4 Bad sector read write error handling rvararnrnnrnrnnnnrnrnnvernennnnrnennnnnnennnnrnennnnnnennnnnne 48 7 5 Remapped SOC inst tesserae eee ence nance cee eae ee eer ee 49 16 EEE 50 Tok Hidden areas in RR ell Gace cece ects sere cet cere cece ees ees te ce cece nets cere secede cece ecese ss eceae eee 50 7 7 1 Host Protected Area HPA rararnernvarnerneannernnnnnernennnernennnernennnerneannurnvarnurnvannurnennne 50 SC blancco 7 82 7 7 2 Device Configuration Overlay DCD 50 7 8 Erasure verification EEE EE 52 7 9 Erasure status and exceptions ENEE 52 110 PE 52 AA DAN SE 2 ele E et Dee E 54 7 13 Erasure standard switch for G le NNN 54 744 Erasing RAID CONGU ATONG eege REENERT EELER EE EE 54 7 15 Hardware not supported by BlANCCO D 55 7 15 1 Unsupported processors ENEE 55 7 15 1 Unsupported dri
67. not enforce any firmware based erasure is selected e The description of the erasure methods is located in the Appendix 2 Execution steps of the erasure standards 4 Ensure that the Erase remapped sectors checkbox is not selected If these conditions are met the erasure will start and Blancco 5 will not attempt the Freeze Lock Removal 9 11 Accessing physical drives connected to RAID controllers 1 Problem description When booting Blancco 5 on a server the user expects to see the physical drives connected to the RAID controller Instead he either does not see anything or has only access to the RAID logical drives 2 Problem explanation First make sure that you are using the right product Blancco 5 is meant for erasing laptops workstations and any machine having a maximum of 4 drives connected Blancco 5 Server is meant for server environments can erase dozens of drives at a time and can access the physical drives connected to a RAID controller Make sure that you are using Blancco 5 Server in this case and that you have enough licenses Then it is possible that your Blancco 5 Server image is configured to show logical drives instead of removing logical drives this is the default image configuration and you need to change it Finally there is a chance that the RAID controller you are attempting to bypass is not supported by Blancco 5 Server ue SS blancco 70 82 3 Problem solution workaround To verify if your Bla
68. ooting on machines with UEFI for more information on this booting method e On some Macs booting from a USB stick will not work instead boot from a Blancco 5 ISO image burnt on a CD e Before booting Blancco 5 remove any external peripheral that is not required in the erasure process in particular remove any connected Thunderbolt interface adapter they do not react properly to the Blancco 5 freeze lock removal process and ultimately can provoke the failure of the erasure 9 9 SATA drives not detected not available in the User interface 1 Problem description Blancco 5 has started and the drive selection shows one or more drives are missing from the drive selection 2 Problem explanation One or more SATA drives in IDE ATA mode cannot be detected or are not showing in the Blancco 5 User Interface Drives might also be broken 3 Problem solution SATA drives need to be set in either AHCI or SATA native mode or similar from BIOS UEFI EFI The IDE mode for SATA drives is not supported by Blancco 5 9 10 Problems with the Freeze lock removal If drives are freeze locked Blancco 5 will attempt to remove the locks by power cycling the machine the screen turns black for few seconds before returning Depending on the booting option used to boot Blancco 5 see the Booting Options or the configured erasure process Manual Semi automatic or Automatic see the Processes the Freeze lock removal may occ
69. or the results and the effect that erasure has on them This will help to identify particular models that become unresponsive post erasure Details on drives that have been found to consistently brick after calling firmware erasure commands can be found at http www blancco com ssdinfo 10 3 3 Failed Erasures Blancco s SSD erasure method applies strict verification requirements in order to provide a holistic approach to SSD erasure and mitigate the issues highlighted by previous research If a drive does not support the firmware erasure commands not because of a BIOS issued freeze lock then there are some alternative reason o Verification Issues In the case of drives that consistently fail verification the report will indicate when this occurs it is possible that the drive will require some additional process or analysis If this situation arises please contact your local Blancco representative Blancco is seeking to identify these models and attain details of drive operations from OEMs in order to offer assurances of security and or specific methods for handling these drives o Firmware Upgrading SSD vendors often develop and issue firmware updates over the lifetime of a drive The firmware updates may be developed to address some technical issue or bug found after the SSDs are released to consumers Updated SSD firmware usually implies performance improvements security updates or improved drive reliability ue SS bl
70. our local Blancco representative regarding the erasure of these drives 7 15 2 1 SAS The current SSD solution is designed for SATA SSDs only and more investigation is required to ensure that the correct process is identified for SAS models Successfully applied erasure and verification techniques will protect SAS SSDs against known non invasive attacks Research is continuing into protection offered against laboratory attacks ue SS blancco 55 82 Considering the information above if the erasure of SAS SSDs is required by the user it is recommended to use a combination of overwriting and the SCSI Format Unit command with 100 verification 7 15 2 2 Hybrid A hybrid drive is a composite non volatile storage device It has two separate areas of storage some flash memory the SSD portion a fraction of the total capacity and spinning magnetic platters just like a regular HDD Currently hybrid models usually present the magnetic storage portion as being addressable at the software level Moreover these drives do not present any information to indicate that they utilize hybrid technology Therefore Blancco 5 cannot reliably detect that a hybrid drive has been connected for erasure If a hybrid drive has undertaken a successful erasure and verification process this means that only the part that has been presented to the software usually the magnetic HDD will be processed Since it is not currently possible to verify the erasure of th
71. pe the BIOS passwords requested during the booting up phase This refers to the passwords that some computers require even before the actual booting starts Other kinds of BIOS passwords do not usually prevent erasing the drive e Disable power saving features from the BIOS Note This step is usually not needed but some hardware may have problems if power saving is enabled so if you have just one license it is prudent to do this In a recycling center or corporate environment this should be done only if there are problems with the given computer model when the power saving is on e If your Blancco 5 software is in iso image form burn it to a CD or make a bootable USB Stick e Switch on the computer power put in the Blancco 5 CD and boot the system from the CD or use the booting that suits you best Read the section Accessing the BIOS and changing the boot sequence for further info e Follow the user instructions in order to start erasing the data Double check that all data storage devices have been detected correctly so that all the data will be correctly erased from them Note Blancco provides the MD5 checksum of the ISO image in the delivery email To verify that the MD5 checksum for your image is correct please use a MD5 checksum verification tool Warning Shutting the computer down exiting the program disconnecting the drive s or pausing cancelling the process when Blancco 5 is performing an erasure on the drive s with MIST
72. processes consist of predefined steps which are numbered and have to be followed to complete an erasure and a report generation There are three default processes Manual Semi automatic and Automatic The configured process is visible in the Blancco 5 UI but can only be changed via the B5CT software Process Manual 4 1 1 Manual In this mode everything is done manually The erasure must be started by the user The user must then manually send the report to the BMC or save it to a USB memory stick Running hardware tests or updating the report fields must also be done manually 4 1 2 Semi automatic In this mode the erasure is automatically started and the report is automatically sent to the BMC Report saving is optional and must be done manually Running hardware tests or updating the report fields must also be done manually 4 1 3 Automatic In this mode the erasure is automatically started and the report is automatically sent to the BMC Report saving is optional and must be done manually This process automatically skips the manual hardware tests and updates the report fields before sending the report however the user can still do these steps manually if required in which case the process will wait until these steps are completed 4 2 Image usage Under the process there is a space where the user can set a label that specifies the usage of the Blancco 5 image for easy identification in environments where several image
73. r Ste innotek GmbH VirtualB ox Genuinelntel Intel R CorelTM 17 4510U CPU 2 00GHz 2 5 GHz CPUO 1008 MB RAM Wi Erase remapped sector 4 3 3 2 1 Erasure standards Size 2 9 GB 4 3 GB 1 2 GB Standard Serial number VBdbedOf0f e7ee2a64 VB301b2686 9414022a VB287c5490 c923484f 110011 011001 Erase The erasure method or standard used to wipe out the drives can be selected from the Erasure standard drop down list Erasure standard Bruce Schneier s Algorithm T Blancco 5 supports up to 19 erasure standards See the detailed list below standard including a firmware based erasure step Available erasure standards in Blancco 5 Air Force System Security Instruction 5020 Blancco SSD Erasure ATA Bruce Schneier s Algorithm BSI GS BSI GSE DoD 5220 22 M DoD 5220 22 M ECE NIST 800 88 Clear NIST 800 88 Purge ATA Firmware based Erasure Extended Firmware based Erasure HMG Infosec Standard 5 Higher Standard HMG Infosec Standard 5 Lower Standard National Computer Security Center NCSC TG 025 Navy Staff Office Publication NAVSO P 5239 26 Hee Bde Go blancco Overwriting rounds WR kA 28 82 NSA 130 1 3 OPNAVINST 5239 1A 3 Peter Gutmann s Algorithm 35 U S Army AR380 19 3 Erasure standards supported by Blancco 5 See the chapter Execution steps of the erasure standards for more information 4 3 3 2 2 Erase remapped sectors The erasure of remapped
74. re command The latest versions of Blancco s software will attempt to automatically remove the lock Please see the appropriate part of the manual for further guidelines on removal e The verification stage of SSD erasure must be completed successfully If it cannot complete the erasure is considered a fail o The verification of an SSD must show that no data has remained on the device at the logical level If anomalies are found the erasure report will state a failed process o There is a possibility that some encrypting SSD models will appear to consistently fail erasure because verification will fail See the Failed Erasures section below for further information on handling o Some drives may claim to support certain firmware erasure commands but do not perform any erasure of data when initiated If any kind of remnant data is found erasure will result in a fail This is a key security requirement o Variations in drive implementations may mean that some drives require a slightly different process see Failed Erasures section below for further details e If the SSD experiences any issues when writing data erasure is considered to fail due to possibility that the disk may be faulty or near its end of life 10 3 Handling Information 10 3 1 Erasure Method The Blancco erasure software will recognize that an SSD has been detected and will automatically recommend the use of Blancco s proprietary method for SSDs Blancco s SSD eras
75. reen Hold down left shift key and select restart 4 The device should reboot into a blue Choose an Option screen Select Troubleshoot gt Advanced Options gt UEFI Firmware Settings gt Restart 6 UEFI firmware setup screen should show up Make sure that Secure boot control is disabled and save the settings pn 9 4 2 Booting with a Blancco 5 USB stick It is possible to boot Blancco 5 5 1 on a machine that has UEFI with a bootable USB stick Nevertheless changing the booting options see the Booting Options may not work on these machines as only the default booting option s parameters are taken into account Try the following to overcome this issue If the machine has UEFI and BIOS the easiest solution is to use the BIOS mode to boot the machine If the machine has UEFI and no BIOS you can create a bootable Blancco 5 USB stick with the Blancco USB Creator 2 1 0 58 or newer This version or newer adds the Booting Options as a second menu right after the main boot menu 9 5 Blancco 5 hangs during the booting You may find yourself with a machine where Blancco 5 hangs during the booting phase If this situation occurs 1 Boot Blancco 5 and press the up or down arrow key right after the first Blancco 5 static screen appears Blancco Certified Data Erasure Starting Blancco 5 Screen might turn black momentarily please wait 2 Select the booting option Show startup messages which will display sta
76. reful that you enable this option on drives where you also want to erase remove any existing hidden area Warning Avoid turning off the computer exiting the program disconnecting the drive s pausing cancelling the erasure during the Remapped Sector erasure process or the drive s may be damaged Warning Disable the BIOS HDD detection when using Remapped Sector erasure In many computers the remapped sectors can be erased even without changing BIOS settings but by disabling the BIOS HDD detection some problems can be avoided 7 6 Freeze lock If the drive is Freeze locked removal of the drive s hidden areas or issuing the firmware based erasure commands is not possible Blancco 5 detects if at least one of the drives about to be erased is Freeze locked When a Freeze lock is detected Blancco 5 tries automatically to remove the Freeze lock by power cycling the machine the machine is put to sleep the drives locks are removed and the machine is woken up When this power cycling happens the screen usually goes black for a few seconds before returning As the machine is power cycled Blancco 5 attempts to remove the freeze locks on all locked drives at once so this process occurs at most once per session Warning With some hardware configurations the screen might not turn back on This depends heavily on the machine s graphical card and or the graphical driver used as some devices do not wake up properly The erasure process is either
77. rite the smallest possible block to the drive and if unable to do so after three tries the sector will be marked as a physical bad sector This procedure offers an extremely accurate erasure even in cases of bad sectors so that all the possible areas will be erased and only the real bad sectors areas will be reported The bad sectors will be reported in the user interface as well as in the erasure report which is produced after each erasure If there was a read write error detected during the erasure process during overwriting rounds or verification the erasure result will be Not erased The verification mechanism on Blancco 5 is configured to provide the statistically most effective analysis of the drive on any given verification percentage through checking sectors at evenly spaced intervals The higher the percentage selected by the user means that a larger amount of the drive will be analyzed resulting in a greater chance that bad sectors read write errors will be detected 7 5 Remapped sectors Modern drives have a lot of functions for self testing self recovering and keeping track of their state One of the possibilities is sector remapping This allows the drives to detect and hide the sectors which will either be or have become impossible to access The drives have a so called Spare area intended precisely for this When a failed sector is detected the drive controller assigns the address of the sector to a new one in the spare
78. rk area The Report step s working area contains the report It can be viewed before during and after the erasure of the drives or editing of the fields Process Manual Data erasure report Lersue Ll Licensed to Example Company 3 disk s erased succesfully Custom fields Custom 1 Value 1 Custom 2 Value 2 Ga Erasure results Disk 1 Vendor VBOX Model HARDDISK Serial VBdbedOf0f e7ee2a64 Size 2899MB Bus IDE Sectors 5662308 2 Hardwaretests HPA Doesn t exist DCO Doesn t exist Remapped sector s 0 Health status N A Testis successful Start end time 2014 09 18 13 29 33 2014 09 18 13 30 08 Duration 00 00 34 Method HMG Infosec Standard 5 Lower Standard L3 Input amp edit o Rounds 1 overwriting Status Erased Update successful Disk 2 Vendor VBOX Model HARDDISK Serial VB301b2686 9414022a 4 Report i Size 4294MB Bus SATA Sectors 8388608 HPA Doesn t exist DCO Doesn t exist Remapped sector s 0 Health status N A Start end time 2014 09 18 13 29 33 2014 09 18 13 29 56 Duration 00 00 22 Method HMG Infosec Standard 5 Lower Standard Rounds 1 overwriting Cratie innetek GmbH VirtualBox Genuinelntel Intel R Core TM i7 4510U CPU 2 00GHz 2 7 GHz CPUO 1008 MB RAM 4 6 2 1 Report content Before the erasure has been completed the report is simply an asset report which contains information about the hardware of the machine After the erasure it becomes an erasure report with combined asset information an
79. rnal drive commands that are capable of removing the hidden areas The hidden areas removal can be selected along with any erasure standard that Blancco 5 supports this removal is enabled disabled only via the B5CT When enabling the hidden areas removal and attempting to erase a drive the following actions will follow o An extra step running a specific drive command is added to the selected erasure standard only in case o the drive has at least one hidden area o the erasure standard does not include any hidden area removal step o This additional step is capable of removing the hidden areas but is merely optional if this extra step fails it will not fail the whole erasure process which will continue nevertheless For more information about the erasure status see Erasure status and exceptions The following table contains a summary of different locking protection methods supported by Blancco 5 Drive interfaces ATA SCSI Fibre Channel Bad sector detection YES YES YES YES Remapped sectors detection YES YES YES YES Remapped sectors erasure 2 YES 2 YES YES YES Host Protected Area HPA 2 YES 2 YES 1 Not existing 1 Not existing erasure removal Device Configuration Overlay 2 YES 2 YES 1 Not existing 1 Not existing DCO erasure removal 1 Not existing this mark means that the technology is not available in the drive standard For instance HPA is not supported in the SCSI standard 2 Yes u
80. rollers that can presently be dismantled Adaptec IBM ServeRAID Controllers ServeRAID Controllers DAC960 AcceleRAID extremeRAID PCI RAID Controllers LSI MegaRAID Dell PERC INTEL RAID Controllers HP Smart Array Controllers If your RAID controller is not in the list Blancco highly recommends that the array is dismantled manually from the BIOS of the RAID card or via the software provided by the manufacturer If your controller supports the JBOD mode please set it to that mode Then Blancco 5 Server can attempt to detect the physical drives for erasure Please make sure that the firmware in your RAID ue SS blancco 54 82 adapter has been updated recently in order to avoid any unnecessary problems with the RAID controller Support for other RAID controllers will be implemented in upcoming versions 7 15 Hardware not supported by Blancco 5 7 15 1 Unsupported processors Blancco 5 supports x86 processor based machines however some machines use different processor architectures RISC ARM that Blancco 5 does not support and cannot directly erase Sun SPARC based servers can be erased using our Blancco SPARC product Fortunately data storage devices are always the same regardless of the hardware whether x86 or RISC architecture and Blancco can be used to erase the drives from these machines by connecting them to an x86 processor based computer A typical solution consists of removing those drives from their non supported server and co
81. rows to move between the rows drives o Use left amp right arrows to access the drive s Pause Resume and Cancel buttons 5 1 3 Space bar Whenever the focus is e On top of a check box o The Space bar selects deselects it e On top of a button o The Space bar pushes it 5 1 4 Enter key Whenever the focus is e On top of a button blancco 41 82 ono oon o The Enter key pushes it e Onan element of an expanded drop down list o The Enter key selects that element e On top of a link o The Enter key opens it 5 1 5 Escape key Whenever the focus is e On top of an expanded drop down list o Esc key collapses it e Inside an open window popup dialog o Esc key closes it without saving any change equivalent of Cancel Close or XI e While running a hardware test o Esc key exits the test 5 2 Accessing the Header area The buttons of the Header area are accessed exclusively with the function keys 5 2 1 F1 F4 function keys e F1 pushes the Help button opens the Help window e F2 pushes the Report issue button opens the Report issue window e F3 pushes the Settings button opens the Settings window e F4 pushes the Hexviewer button opens the Hexviewer window These buttons might differ depending on the version of the software The logic always follows the same formula first button on the left of Shutdown button is F1 next one on the left is F2 etc 5 2 2 F10 function key Press
82. rtup messages during the booting instead of the animated loading screen 3 Take note of the last messages shown in the screen before the hanging contact the Blancco Support and provide them with the messages SS blancco 66 82 9 6 Booting on machines having a TPM chip The TPM Trusted Platform Module security chip is designed to secure hardware by integrating cryptographic keys into devices This chip is installed on modern laptops e g Lenovo X240 or T440p If this chip is enabled it currently does not react well to the Blancco 5 freeze lock removal process and the machine does not resume at all black screen There is a workaround which consists into disabling the chip from the BIOS unless the setting is locked by password After disabling the chip and rebooting Blancco 5 the machine are able to restart the freeze lock is removed and the drives can be securely erased 1 First update to latest BIOS version 2 Reboot the machine and open the BIOS settings 3 On the Security page Secure Boot Change Secure Boot gt Disabled 4 On the Security page Security Chip Change Security Chip gt Disabled If there are issues with the UEFI boot 1 On the Startup page change UEFI Legacy Boot gt Legacy Only 2 Follow the procedure described previously 9 7 Booting without a display adapter Blancco 5 can be booted and used without a display adapter but it must be remotely controlled via the BMC 3 The following requ
83. s and then configures all devices to have the same number of sectors A rewritable memory chip that holds its content without power Flash Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory or flash memory is a kind of non volatile storage device where erasing can only be done in blocks or the entire chip A serial data transfer architecture The most prominent Fibre Channel standard is Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop FC AL In electronic systems and computing firmware is the combination of persistent memory and program code and data stored in it A way of erasing a data storage device HDD SSD using internal commands located in the device firmware The erasure commands can differ depending on the drive interface ATA SCSI SAS SATA Some BIOS versions offer the ability to lock ATA drives the access creation or removal of HPAs DCOs or the use of commands in Security and Sanitize Device feature sets to erase the drive are blocked These locks are called freeze locks When the freeze lock is enabled for some feature set its commands cannot be processed These locks prevent external software from creating modifying removing HPA or DCO areas erasing reallocated sectors or performing firmware based erasures Short for Hardware Against Software Piracy it is a software protection dongle that plugs into an electrical connector on a computer and serves as an electronic key for a piece of software The program will run only when the
84. s used in altering the HDD information Failure to accurately detect the HDD may result in an incomplete erasure All Blancco data erasure tools utilize hardware level detection for HDDs which enables the software to detect correct HDD sizes regardless of faulty or incorrect BIOS set HDD values As a result the overwriting process will reach the whole HDD surface leaving no areas untouched 7 4 Bad sector read write error handling Even though the incorrectly configured faulty or damaged configurations cause a potentially remarkable data security risk there are also other gaps that need to be addressed in order to guarantee a secure data erasure process HDDs can contain damaged areas that cannot anymore be accessed with read or write command which makes those areas unusable In data erasure terms these areas are called physical bad sectors Data erasure tools must be able to detect and especially report them Blancco 5 keeps track of the data erasure procedure and informs if the data erasure overwrite cannot be performed due to some error on the HDD E g in case there are any bad sector s found on the HDD the software will try to write a data block to the defective area If the area ue SS blancco 48 82 remains silent Blancco will try to write a smaller block half of the original block size to the defective area in order to overwrite the maximum amount of data The same procedure will continue until the software tries to w
85. s are configured with different settings Example For laptops with SSDs For servers HMG 1x Process Manual The image usage label is configurable with BSCT 4 3 Erasure step The Erasure step is the first defined default step When clicking on this step the user can see in the work area the drives available for erasure The erasure step s tab also shows some information about the erasures overall process ue SS blancco 22 82 4 3 1 Tab color and overall progress The Erasure step tab s color informs of the overall erasure progress not started gray ongoing blue successful green failed or canceled red paused yellow Whenever there is at least one erasure ongoing the erasure percentage is also displayed in the tab Information about the number of drives being erased and their status is also written under the Erasure tab l Erasure ay Erasure tab erasure not yet started Erasure tab ongoing erasure s 1 diskis being erased Erasure tab successful erasure s 1 diskis erased succesfully Erasure tab failed erasure s 1 diskis erasure failed Erasure tab canceled erasure s 1 diskis erasure canceled Erasure tab paused erasure s 1 diskis being paused 4 3 2 Remaining time and state icon Indication of the remaining erasure time is also displayed under the Erasure tab ue SS blancco 23 82 1 diskis being erased lm
86. sectors can be enabled by checking the Erase remapped sectors checkbox Please find more detailed information about remapped sectors in the Remapped sectors section w l Erase remapped sectors 4 3 3 2 3 Verification The amount of verification done during or after the drives erasure can be selected from the Verification slider Verification 1 96 See the Erasure verification section for more details 4 3 3 2 4 Erase button The erasure process is always started from the Erase button which is located on the bottom right of the screen or press the Ctrl E combination After the Erase button is pressed a confirmation window is shown the same window is shown from the Standard view pressing Yes continues to the erasure pressing No exits the window and does not start the erasure The Blancco EULA can also be accessed from the confirmation window Warning If a drive has a Freeze lock Blancco 5 can attempt to remove it in such case the screen may momentarily turn off but should resume after few seconds Please be patient and wait for the screen to resume For more information about Freeze lock see the chapter Freeze lock 4 3 3 2 5 Drive s progress bar The erasure progress of each individual drive can be monitored via a progress bar which displays the erasure state erasure standard percentage of erasure erasure speed and also offers the possibility to pause and or cancel the erasure ue
87. sful status or fail it Failed status by pressing Yes or No from the dialog window PC speaker test Did you hear all the sounds correctly Closing the window without pressing Yes or No will leave the test with the status Not performed em 8 2 5 Optical devices The optical device test is used to test the functionality of the optical drives The possible tests that are implemented are reading test writing test and blanking test All the optical devices connected to the computer are displayed as well as their capabilities Optical drive with only read capability Optical drive CD ROM Read Optical drive with write and read capability Optical drive CD ROM Write Read Blank The available checkboxes define if the test is performable or not All available checkboxes are checked by default Unchecking a test checkbox will skip that part of the optical device test Inserted optical disk The user can insert a CD RW DVD RW disc or a previously burnt disc containing the Blancco pattern The Blancco pattern disc is required to test optical devices without write capabilities ue SS blancco 62 82 If the inserted disc is RW then the software can perform the writing and reading tests as well as blanking the RW disc at the end of the test If the inserted disc is R only it has to be burnt previously to contain the Blancco pattern Only the reading test can be selected the other tests are not possible
88. st be without special chars lt gt e The name cannot be empty e The name should not be BLANCCO this name is reserved for Blancco 5 bootable USB sticks exclusively 3 5 Help function button The Help button is used to open the quick help menu Fi ry Help Pressing this button opens the Help window This window contains information about the GUI Graphical User Interface header area process and working areas keyboard control of Blancco 5 and also a quick guide for performing erasures The Help window consists of two columns the left column contains the Help table of contents as well as a search box the right column contains the Help content selecting a chapter in the table of contents will automatically update the content Welcome to the Help Section of Blancco 5 Below you will find Getting started with Blancco 5 e A description of the main elements of the Graphical User Interface rabhical Use PE Instructions on how to interact with these elements Graphical User Interface e Quick steps to perform an erasure presentation Keyboard shortcuts to control the software without a mouse o Keyboard control For more information on how to use the Blancco 5 Product please refer to the Blancco 5 user Quick steps for performing an manual that has been provided or contact the Blancco Support at http support blancco com erasure Other Blancco tools Blancco 5 Configuration Tool t
89. ted sectors When the drive finds a read write verification error it Sectors marks this sector as reallocated and transfers data to a special reserved area Spare area SAS Short for Serial Attached SCSI it is a communication protocol used to move data to and from computer storage devices such as hard drives and tape drives SAS is a point to point serial protocol that replaces the parallel SCSI bus technology SATA Serial ATA or SATA is an evolution of the Parallel ATA physical storage interface SATA is a Serial link a single cable with a minimum of four wires creates a point to point connection between devices SCSI Short for Small Computer System Interface a parallel interface standard used by Apple Macintosh computers PCs and many UNIX systems for attaching peripheral devices to computers SPI In Blancco 5 SPI stands for SCSI Parallel Interface the predecessor of SAS It is one of the interface implementations in the SCSI family and it defines the electrical Hee Bde gt blancco 3 82 Signals and connections for parallel SCSI Solid State Drive is a data storage device used for storing digital information using integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently SSID stands for Service Set Identifier An SSID is a unique ID that consists of 32 characters and is used for naming wireless networks When multiple wireless networks overlap in a certain location SSIDs make sure that the data gets sent
90. the following Try booting Blancco 5 using the second booting option Normal startup native resolution If problems arise with the aforementioned booting option black screen machine is unresponsive try booting Blancco 5 using the first option Normal startup safe resolution If problems arise during the booting phase Blancco 5 hangs try booting Blancco 5 using the fourth option Show startup messages take note of the last messages shown in the screen before the hanging and contact the Blancco Support These options are hidden by default and the time limit to select a booting option other than the default one is 5 seconds 7 2 Software version The version number of the software is always on the top left of the graphical user interface in the Header area 7 3 Detecting HDDs Magnetic storage media such as HDDs use physical addressing when storing information on a media device With this addressing the HDD is divided into smaller parts that can be appointed according to certain parameters In magnetic media the aforementioned physical parameters are sectors cylinders and heads During the computer usage these parameters enable the operating systems to locate the information on a HDD but they also define the size and storage base of a HDD A reliable and protected detection of these hardware level parameters is essential and the erasure software must be capable of detecting the correct HDD sizes regardless of the technique
91. the erasure All the drives connected and running in the computer are shown in the view by default they are selected for erasure Please check that the drives have been correctly identified The drive information available in the GUI is Number of drives Vendor Model vendor or the model of the drive Type connection type SATA SPI SSD Size size of the drive in GB Serial number serial number of the drive Process Manual Number of drives 3 Vendor Model Type 1 Erasure 1 VBOX HARDDISK IDE 2 Hardware tests ay reen 2 VBOX HARDDISK SATA 4 Report 3 VBOX HARDDISK SATA inn tek GmbH VirtualBox Genuinelntel Intel R CorelTM 17 4510U CPU 2 00GHz 2 5 GHz CPUO 1008 MB RAM ue SS blancco Size 2 9 GB 4 3 GB 1 2 GB Advanced Serial number VBdbedO0f0fe7ee2a64 VB301b2686 9414022a VB287c5490 c923484f n d A D Mie 110011 011001 ar Erase 25 82 4 3 3 1 1 Erase button In order to start the erasure the user has to press the Erase button which is located on the bottom right of the screen or press the Ctrl E combination The erasure method or standard used is always the default one so is the verification level and the remapped sectors erasure all selected when configuring the ISO image with the B5CT The erasure of each drive can be monitored via the drive s progress bar After the Erase button
92. to the correct destination UEFI EFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface UEFI is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware UEFI is meant to replace the Basic Input Output System BIOS firmware interface present in all IBM PC compatible personal computers UI GUI Short for User Interface and Graphical User Interface User addressable area This is the area of the data storage drive that the O S or the user can freely access This area does not include areas such as the HPA or DCO WLAN Wireless LAN a local area network that uses high frequency radio signals rather than cables to transmit and receive data over distances of a few hundred feet wirelessly Bee Bde SS blancco 4 82 TABLE OF CONTENTS L EE INONMA In D 10 Bal MOC aN NOU CC hhv 11 2 BGO ETNE 12 AG 0 1 koto EEE EE 12 22 PO 12 Ze WO WE 12 2A COO CO E 13 E Oy et EE 13 ZZ GIGS CONOR E 13 24 T OW CONC E 13 2AA ROG COlOM ee 13 EE BUE COO EEE EEE EE EE 13 2 5 Popups TOF special ANNES E 13 DD EEE EEE EA 13 EE SE DE SS 14 Ei 15 3 1 Software version and license control E 15 32 EE MAO DUON vr 15 3 3 Settings function button sek NKN NK NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN NENNEN RER RR NENNEN RENE KN EN RK RER 17 3 4 Report Issue function button NENNEN 18 3 5 Help function button aravarvvrrvarnvrnnarnvrnnarnvrnnarnernnannvrneannvrnennnvrnennnurnennnurnennnurnennnuene 20 30 TT MN NN 20 Tr PRO
93. u are using the Blancco 5 product on a machine that has more than 4 drives You have already erased 4 drives maximum amount is reached and cannot erase any extra drive s You have enforced the Blancco SSD method on SSDs from B5CT but your erasure standard is another one You have SSDs selected for erasure that do not support this erasure standard Before the erasure starts the Blancco SSD method is attempted on all ATA SSDs those that do not support it raise the warning and the erasure Stops Save the erasure report and reboot the machine if you want to erase the remaining drives the same problem occurs with Blancco 5 Server whenever you have reached the limit of 256 erased drives Load the Blancco 5 image in B5CT and disable the setting in question Reboot Blancco 5 and try erasing your drives using standards that they support 73 82 10 APPENDIX 1 SSD SUPPLEMENT 10 1 Guidelines for Using SSD Erasure Method The following guidelines should be carefully followed when erasing an SSD e Currently the SSD Erasure Method is only designed to erase SSDs that use the ATA interface and support the firmware based erasure commands o For these drives the recommended and most thorough erasure standard available in the software is Blancco s SSD Erasure Standard However if your erasure policy mandates that a different process should be applied for these drives other options can be selected but a message
94. ur before the GUI starts or right before an erasure process starts Unfortunately in some hardware configurations the screen might not turn back on meaning that the freeze lock removal procedure is not properly supported by the machine 9 10 1 How to handle problematic hardware The user will usually face three situations with problematic hardware ue SS blancco 68 82 I The screen stays black and an erasure process starts in the background the drive s light starts blinking as the drive is being actively erased In this situation only the screen is missing if the user wants to monitor the erasure a workaround consists in monitoring it via the BMC 3 After the erasure the report can also be fetched Please refer to the BSCT and BMC manuals for more information about this feature II The screen stays black and nothing starts in the background however the machine is on lights are on fans are working In this situation the screen is missing but the drives are most likely detected and ready for erasure if the user wants to start and monitor the erasure a workaround consists in controlling it via the BMC 3 After the erasure the report can also be fetched Please refer to the BSCT and BMC manuals for more information about this feature III The screen stays black and the machine is unresponsive lights are off fans are not working In this situation the Freeze lock removal is most likely paused or has failed There are three w
95. ure method combines different techniques to provide the best security available and may exceed the requirements of other erasure standards However the sanitization process is ultimately mandated by the user of the software and based on their internal policy For example the policy may be to strictly adhere to NIST 800 88 and apply those processes ue SS blancco 75 82 10 3 2 Inoperable Drives It is possible that SSDs containing firmware that is flawed or have some other operational deficiency possibly due to being near to the end of their life will be subject to malfunction as a result of the erasure process This highlights drives that are faulty regarding their internal erasure or operational methods When an event arises whereby an organization decides that an SSD is considered to be either unserviceable or have security concerns about a drive possibly due to a failed erasure process or some other reason further disposition considerations are required The organization handling the SSDs should consider if a destructive process is required on drives that enter an unresponsive state It is also possible that the drive s OEM or a data recovery lab can return the SSD to an operational condition Guidance should be sought from the relevant vendor in this case It should be noted that during Blancco s testing operations this situation has occurred in only a few cases When proceeding with the erasure of drives it is advised to monit
96. urface scan analysis activates possible values from 1 30 sec This time does not begin counting until there are no commands being sent to the controller Surface scan analysis is a background process that scans hard drives for bad sectors in fault tolerant logical drives In RAID 5 or RAID ADG configurations surface scan also verifies the consistency of parity data Whenever the erasure part is completed the surface scan is activated during the verification part and the controller starts writing some meta RAID data on the drives This naturally provokes the verification failure and subsequently the whole erasure process failure Unfortunately the surface scan cannot be disabled nor delayed more than 30 seconds 3 Problem workaround This problem can be worked around in the following way 1 If you happen to have a HP Smart Array RAID controller that presents this problem before booting Blancco 5 remove manually all of the RAID logical array configurations 2 Boot Blancco 5 and follow the normal erasure procedure a Some HBAs will create a logical array s automatically during boot if they find unassigned physical disks which don t belong to any RAID array That automatic creation has to be manually skipped by pressing ESC this key press might vary see ue SS blancco 71 82 hardware s documentation for more info to prevent the problem from happening again 9 13 Bootable Asset Report not displayed 1 Problem description
97. us or fail it Failed status by pressing Yes or No from the dialog window Display test Did you see all the test colors and images correctly Closing the window without pressing Yes or No will leave the test with the status Not performed Yes 8 2 2 Pointing devices The Pointing Devices Test is used to test the pointing device connected to the machine mouse trackball touchpad or other device In this test the user must click on the right left and middle mouse buttons and click on the circled areas on the right and left side of the screen When pressing a button the color of the corresponding button in the screen is changed from red default button is not pressed yet to yellow button is pressed to green button is released To exit the test before the test s end the Escape key must be pressed Note On many laptops the touchpad only has 2 buttons in order to activate the middle button both buttons must be pressed at the same time Example of the test at the start then after the left and middle mouse button have been activated and the left circled area has been clicked SS blancco 59 82 blancco ee blancco ed The test has ended the user can add extra info on the text field and pass the test Successful status or fail it Failed status by pressing Yes or No from the dialog window Pointer test Did the pointing device work correctly Closing the window without pressing Yes or No will l
98. ves ENEE 55 TB se test E eee eee 55 ET 55 7 2 WAV OVI EEE EEE 56 7 15 3 RAID controllers connected to SAS SATA CIiV S ccccececseveceevveesevaverenvavenenvavenenas 56 o PIANO Wale CSG E 57 8L Automatc EE 57 SE Pone EE ES 57 LP 57 AE EG 05 EE ces dee oes ene en gree een deen RR NN MN MN NE 57 8 1 4 Eege ANG BE 58 62 ECH 58 L DNG 58 PN 59 e On e EE 60 924 EE e 61 8 2 5 NNN 62 9 Troubleshooting EE 64 9 1 Burning the iso image Creating el 64 9 2 Accessing the BIOS and changing the boot SEQUENCE EE 64 9 3 Booting on machines with low RAM less than IG 65 9 4 Booting on machines with UEFI un 65 9 4 1 Disabling the Secure Boot uk 65 SC blancco 8 82 9 4 1 1 General EE E D I 9 4 1 2 Windows Surface Re EE 66 9 4 2 Booting with a Blancco 5 USB stpck ENEE 66 9 5 Blancco 5 hangs during the booting ENEE 66 9 6 Booting on machines having a TPM chup NEE 67 9 7 Booting without a display adapter NEEN 67 9 8 Booting on Apple Computere NENNEN 68 9 9 SATA drives not detected not available in the User mtertoace AAA 68 9 10 Problems with the Freeze lock removal a 68 9 10 1 How to handle problematic hardware rrararnrrnrnnnnrnrnnnnrnennnnrnennnnnnennnnnnennnnnenene 68 9 10 2 How to avoid the automatic Freeze Lock Remova NN 70 9 11 Accessing physical drives connected to RAID controllers NNN NNN 70 9 12 Erasing drives connected to the HP Smart Array controller NEE 71 9 13 Bootable Asset Report not disp
99. xBB Overwrite with OxCC Overwrite with 0xDD Overwrite with OxEE Overwrite with OxFF Overwrite with 0x924924 Overwrite with 0x492492 Overwrite with 0x249249 Overwrite with 0x6DB6DB Overwrite with 0xB6DB6D Overwrite with OxDB6DB6 Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data 11 2 Firmware and forced standards Firmware Based Erasure For ATA drive ESE gt SE For SCSI drive FU Verify data pattern verification Bee L SS blancco Step e PSP ANAM AWN Ee dag a z SS A CG a Ge 2 NNNNNNNNN or N o W WwW WW W EE 35 80 82 Extended Firmware Based Erasure Overwrite with 0xCB For ATA drive ESE gt SE For SCSI drive FU Verify data pattern verification NIST 800 88 Clear Overwrite with aperiodic random data Verify data NIST 800 88 Purge ATA For ATA drive ESE gt SE For other type of drive erasure standard not compatible erasure won t start Verify data pattern verification Remove HPA DCO if existing Overwrite with aperiodic random data For ATA drive ESE gt SE gt Overwrite with 0x00 For SCSI drive FU gt Overwrite with 0x00 Verify data pattern verification Remove HPA DCO if existing Overwrite with aperiodic random data Overwrite with aperiodic random data For ATA drive ESE gt SE gt Overwrite wit

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