Sometimes refered to as disk, tape, or media declassification, as formatting, as pattern erasure, or occasionally by the generic reference of data remanence. While initially easy, characteristics of the media and of the device error recovery and bad block handling can make this effort far more difficult than it might initially appear. Security and sensitivity of the data is central to this discussion, as is the value of the storage hardware involved—with data of greater value than the disks involved, physical destruction of the platters may be the most expedient, economical, and appropriate approach. Other potential options include the Freeware RZDISK package, the OpenVMS INITIALIZE/ERASE command (and potentially in conjunction with the $erapat system service) and OpenVMS Ask The Wizard topics such as (841), (3926), (4286), (4598), and (7320).