NDW - Server User Guide Video Tutorial
NDW - Workstation Data Wiping User Guide Video Tutorial
Graphical User Interface (GUI) NDW - Network HDD Data Wiping
Access the GUI at following URL. http://192.168.1.253
Below you can see the main menu of the automated data wiping system.
You can now start a new network data wiping by clicking “START WIPING” button.
Once you click “START NETWORK WIPING” button you will see following screen. (Screen shot on the next page)
Please fill the require information and click Save.
Note: Please fill all fields otherwise you may have problems with wiping.
Enable or Disable USB Pen/Stick Flash Drives Wiping
Important Note: USB pen drives such as USB sticks, flash drives does not have any serial number neither any smart chip or any smart information. Due to the fact that there is no identification available for such devices, therefore these devices cannot be stored in the database. However, if you enable USB flash devices, they will be wiped but information may not be stored in the Database.
In order to enable or disable the USB devices, please use START NETWORK WIPING and choose to enable or disable USB devices.
Once you have completed all the selections, click Save. Following message will appear.
Now you can close this window and begin data wiping.
Data Wiping
In order to begin actual data wiping, please ensure all your workstations have network cards and pxe boot is enabled. Also make sure all the hard disk drives are connected either using SATA, ATA or external RAIDS arrays.
Now boot the workstations.
Important Note: Please make sure you boot the workstation into NIC or PXE or Network Boot. For example, on a Dell machine pressing F12 key while BIOS screen is displayed will produce a one time boot menu. Choose network boot or PXE to boot from Network.
See below an exmaple.
Important Note if you cannot see the network boot option, you can enable this option from system BIOS settings. Please refer to your system's manufacturer guide.
see below an example.
another example
How to boot into PXE without Network Boot enable NIC card
If your system does not support PXE or Network boot, you can obtain a USB stick or USB boot PXE image which you can burn onto a USB flash drive and boot into NDW PXE using normal network card without PXE feature. Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to obtain a PXE bootable USB flash drive.
Note: You can now download tailor made USB image from NDW server which you can burn on a USB stick. http://192.168.1.253/ipxe.usb
This image is ready to boot any workstation to NDW network . Download this image and burn to usb stick using rufus application. Please refer to rufus for user guide.
Apple Mac Network Booting and NDW Data Wiping
Apple Mac systems does not utilize PXE protocols, they use different protocol called BSDP "Boot Service Discovery Protocol". Almost all Apple Mac systems are UEFI systems and only support BSDP network booting. NDW has been designed to accomodate both IBM compatible systems as well as Apple Mac. NDW automatically detects the system upon booting and delivers appropriate boot service to each system without any action required from your part. A large number of Apple Mac systems have been tested to work with NDW. We have reports that some Apple Mac systems do not boot via network. Please contact the author if your Apple Mac system does not network boot properly.
Proceed to Actual Data Wiping
Now please boot your workstation into Network or PXE.
You may see following screen during the boot process.
Next you will see Smart Information related to each HDD, at this point you can hotswap the HDDs if you wish, otherwise continue to the next stage. Next screen will show you a Warning message.
Next you will see NDW application begining to wipe data automatically from all attached hard disk drives.
Another example of NDW workstation erasing and wiping data.
You can see above a screen shot taken from a system that is currently wiping 4 x HDD over network. Information and realtime progress of each HDD wipe is shown in a widget above.
You will also see following screen, see below. On the wiping workstation screen displays will automatically switch between above and below screen. Below screen will display comprehensive and detailed information for each hard disk drive, above above widgets will only display brief information.
Another screenshot.
Important note: Above is just an example of one machine wiping data over network, you may start wiping hundreds or thousands of machines at the same time. (All machines wiping data from attached hard disk drives concurrently) Now just imagine, if you are wiping data from 100s or may 1000s of machines concurrently, each machine may have multiple hard disk drives, see the above expample; in this case it would be extremely difficult to monitor all machines and HDD at once. To address the managability, we have now created a realtime and live monitoring portal, where you can monitor all machines and hdds progress in realtime from a click of mouse using management portal.
To view simple dashboard just visit the home page http://192.168.1.253 and you will see following on the top section of the page. This information is realtime and live. It updates automatically without refreshing the page.
Brief information Dashboard Realtime Monitoring
To view live and real-time progress of each system that is currently wiping or has failed to wipe or has finished wiping sucessfully, visit following link from the front page.
The next page will display those systems currently wiping, or have finished wiping within last 12 hours, or failed to wipe within last 12 hours. Data showing in this section is realtime and live. (failed, finished wiping or stuck systems are shown only for last 12 hours in this section). You can see below there are 3 systems currently wiping data and status is in progress, 2 x systems have finished successfully wiping data.
Important Note: If you wish to drill down further into each system, you can click the widget to see progress related to each Hard Disk Drive.
See below, click ICP / iEi - SYS ID: 00089bca8f01 widget, following information related to each Hard Disk Drive is displayed. You can see this system has 8 Hard Disk Drives, and only 7 are currently wiping and 1 HDD has failed to wipe.
Important Note If you wish to drill down further into each Hard Disk Drive, you can do so by clicking the HDD widget, this will open up another page which will show detailed information related to that specific Hard Disk Drive. See below an example.
Important Note See above, this hard disk drive is automatically marked as Grade - C the reason for this grade is that this HDD has too many bad sectors; hence the hard disk drive is marked as Grade C.
Important Note Grading of hard disk drive is automatically done by the NDW software. See following chart for Grading of HDD.
Bad Sectors equal to 0 = Grade A
Bad Sectors greater than and between 0 - 99 = Grade B
Bad Sectors greater than 99 = Grade C
How to view wiping status of all Hard Disk Drives.
To view wiping status of all hard disk drives, clicking link will display all Hard Disk Drives regardless of systems.
Clicking above button will display all Hard disk drives. See below an example.
How to view comprehensive details of all HDDs currently wiping.
To view comprehensive details of each HDD regardless of systems, clicking below button will produce realtime progress with comprehensive detailed information for each HDD.
Next page will display realtime progress and detailed information for each HDD that is either currently wiping, finished wiping or has failed to wipe.
See below an example.
How to view systems those failed to wipe HDDs
Failure to wipe data from HDD could occur due to many reasons such as bad HDD, or faulty hardware, or too many read / write erros. Some HDDs simple crash the operating system or the NDW data wiping application. Those HDD that crash the NDW application or operating system will never appear anywhere in the system because NDW is not able to probe the HDDs at all and Operating System kernel panicked and shutdown. However, all systems those failed to wipe data during last 24 hours will appear in this section.
Click following button to view the failed systems.
Next section will display systems those failed to wipe data within last 24 hours.
You can see above, currently there is only 1 system that has failed to wipe data from HDDs. Should another system fails, more failed systems will automatically appear here without refreshing this page. You can see above, only 2 x HDD were failed and the total progress stalled at 92% complete.
How to view HDDs realtime progress for those failed to wipe
To view progress for HDDs those failed to wipe, visit following section and clicking the button will display HDDs those failed to wipe within last 24 hours.
How to view Comprehensive details for HDDs those failed to wipe
To view comprehensive detailed realtime, live progress for HDDs those failed to wipe, clicking this section will produce required realtime progress report.
Clicking above section will produce realtime progress and detailed information for HDDs those failed to wipe during last 24 hours.
How to Rebrand Certificates and Portal with my own company logo & details
You can modify business slogan, business address, contact details as well as upload your own company logo. So the certificates are completely branded with your company details.
In order to reband, click "rebranding" link from the home page http://192.168.1.253
Click the rebranding link as shown above.
Next page will allow you to update company information as well as upload your own logo. Once you have completed this process, all certificates and charts will be rebranding as your own company with your information and logo.
How to operate Data Wiping Mangement Console
Once the data wiping has finished execution, success message will appear and a barcode label will automatically be printed for each hard disk drive and the workstation will shut down automatically.
Once you see the success message or you find the system shutdown at this point you can remove the existing hard disk drive and install the next batch to be wiped.
You can monitor the status of data wiping using the server GUI interface.
To view the status of the data wiping please click the customer portal button.
Next screen may looks like this:
In the above screenshot you have 3 options. From date, to date and customer ID or name. If you have several customer they will automatically appear on the list. Choose the date range and customer that you want to view the status and click submit.
The next page will show you detailed information about data wiping progress (see below screenshot).
The page about shows you customer name, hdd manufacturer, model, serial number, size, firmware, method used to wipe, date wiped, start and end time, workstation number, results and finally the last column allows you to print individual certificate for each Hard Disk Drive.
Note: "Print Button" in the last column will let you print individual data erasure certificate for each storage device.
Important note: At the bottom of each page there is button to export the certificate to MS Excel format.
Now let’s view the individual certificate for each hard disk drive by clicking the print button of each hard disk drive column.
You may have noticed above there are few barcodes, the first barcode contains customer name, 2nd barcode contains customer name and hdd serial number, 3rd barcode which is a data matrix barcode contains all the information regarding hdd, method code contains the method used to wipe the hdd and spindle code contains model and serial number of the hdd.
These barcodes ensures that the certificate is authentic and is not tampered. You can read the data from barcodes by using standard 2d and 3d barcode scanners.
Lets go back a step to the previous page.
Export Data to Excel or PDF format
As explained previously at the bottom of every page there is a button to export the report to Excel. In this case it is called Imran-Report-Excel.
Clicking this button will open this report in Excel, you can use excel file to email to customer or create PDFs.
Here is the screenshot showing this report in Excel.
Note: You can remove extra columns from excel spreadsheet that you don’t need.
Bundle or Mass Data Destruction Certificates in PDF file format
You can also export all certificates to PDF format by visiting to "all certificates" section in customer portal. See below screen shot.
select desired dates and then click the "All Certificate" button. Next screen will let you generate all data erasure certificates and you can download these into PDF file format.
See below example:
Choose the number of certificates you want in a PDF file and click the PDF button and it will open up a print dialogue box, see below an example.
Click Save and it will produce nice formatted PDF file.
An example PDF generated by NDW is attached using above method. See below attachments.
Click here to download sample PDF file.
Click here to download Summary erasure certificate PDF file
Hard Disk Drive Data Wiping Charts
On the home page click the button “Wiping Charts”.
n the next page select the dates and the customer you want to see the data wiping charts.
Next page looks like following (See screenshot)
Customer Graphical Reporting Portal
Once you have the selected the dates and customer click submit.
The next page will show you nicely formatted charts.
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Note: There is a button at the bottom of the page to export the data to Excel downloadable file.
Hard Disk Drives / Storage Device Health Reports
On the home page click the button Health Reports.
On the next page select the dates and the customer you want to view the hdd health report and click submit.
The next page will show you the health report of hard disk drives wiped for the customer between dates you have selected.
As you can see in the page above health report contains comprehensive hard disk drive health information. By viewing the health report you can determine the bad sectors, age, number of time it has been spun, power on time, power cycle counts and so much more.
Hard Disk Drives Health Report Charts
HDD Health report chart also contains very useful information. This page give you an indication of heath of all the hard drives for a specific customer in graphical format.
To view health charts go to the home page. http://192.168.1.253 and select the “Health Charts” button. In the next page select the dates and the customer and click submit.
You will be presented with very nice looking HDD health charts.
Hard Disk Wiping Mini Certificate - Barcode Scanning and Printing
If you have a ZPL compatible USB printer attached to the server USB port, barcodes will automatically be printed upon each successful hdd wipe. However, sometimes odd situations such as printer is not ready, or the adhesive label roll is finished therefore printer was unable to print the label. Now you can reprint the label with the touch of a mouse click.
On the main menu, click the BARCODES button.
The next screen looks like this below.
Make sure your mouse cursor / pointer is in submit box and click.
Now you can start scanning the hard disk drive serial numbers with the barcode scanner, or if you do not have a barcode scanner you can type the serial number by hand.
Note: if you are inputting the serial number manually by hand make sure you press the Enter/Return key after every serial number, so that each serial number appears on the new line underneath.
See below, your scanned barcodes will look like this.
Once completed scanning the barcodes, click submit button.
The next window would look like this.
Barcode Scanning and Exporting Data to Excel
We can now export this page to Excel so that we can email it to someone.
At the right hand bottom corner click the button Excel-Report-Excel.
Clicking this button will open up the report in Microsoft Excel.
Below screen shot is from Excel.
On Demand Barcode Label Printing
Now lets go back to the web browser and reprint a barcode label for a specific hard drive.
Click print barcode for the required hard disk drive and the next screen will automatically print the barcode, make sure barcode label printer is connected to the server machine and is powered on.
Next screen would look like this and a barcode will be printed too.
Data Erasure Certificate printing by serial number
Clicking the Certificate button will cause the system to auto generate and display a data erasure certificate for the specified hard disk drive.
Next screen will produce the certificate that you can print or export to excel file format.
Network Data Wiping - NDW Realtime and Live progress of HDD wiping by each system.
ZPL Compatible Printer printing the HDD Label barcodes.
Self-Adhesive mini data erasure certificate attached to the HDD.
Network Data Wiping - NDW Realtime and Live progress of HDD wiping by each Hard Disk Drive
HDD Barcode Scanning with 2D handheld barcode scanner
Barcode Scanning with Handheld 2D barcode Scanner
Network Data Wiping - NDW Realtime and Live progress of HDD wiping by each Hard Disk Drive Comprehensive Details
Suggestion or comments
If you have suggestions or comments please reach out to the author of this software.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: +44 744 670 4841
Software Customization
If you want to discuss an idea or improvement to the software, please get in touch with the author.
Investor Relations.
If you have a business idea and want to invest and improve this product, please get in touch with the author.
Efforts to develop this software
We have spent thousands of man hours producing this software, there may be some issues that we may not be aware of, but we are hoping you will report the encountered issues and we will try our best to resolve these. If you like this software kindly send us an email, as this encourages us to do more.
Thank you for reading this guide.
Best Regards
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