Dashboard - Older Versions or USB for Sanitize Image

WD SSD Products WD SSD Drives & Software
1

I currently have an open incident with WD support, because I am unable to create a USB for Sanitize with Dashboard 3.1.2.5. Dashboard is not recognizing my USB flash drive. I have done this before but with an older version of Dashboard.

Is there a way to download older versions of Dashboard? Alternatively, is there a way to download the USB image for Sanitize, which I could use to build a bootable USB manually?

2

Below are some instructions, but please do keep in contact with support because:

  1. Development team would like to collect your log and system info so that we can attempt to fix the problem.
  2. The steps below are more complicated than usual for our users and are not the officially supported method. Customer support might help you get it done a simpler way.

The Linux image is available on the public facing download server, it is not an ISO so you can’t just use a typical USB creation tool. Creating a bootable USB is fairly straightforward for UEFI mode if you have technical experience. Format your USB key as FAT32, and copy over the contents of to-esp. Make sure you boot UEFI after.
https://wddashboarddownloads.wdc.com/wdDashboard/application/EmbeddedLinux.zip.

Also, Dashboard won’t configure your USB to select your device and Sanitize operation for you automatically. Make sure you are very careful about selecting the right device and operation in the USB application, you don’t want to erase the wrong thing! Device selection is done by serial number.

3

Thanks for providing the Linux image! I am trying to boot on a Legacy BIOS, not UEFI. It looks like the image expects the SYSLINUX boot loader. I installed the SYSLINUX boot loader on the USB device and the contents of to-esp, but it’s not booting. Do you know of any peculiarities with SYSLINUX and the Linux image that I should be aware of?

Edit 1: I tried both installing SYSLINUX to the USB device via the syslinux command and copying mbr.bin to the boot sector via the dd command. The latter displays “Missing operating system” for a few seconds when trying to boot and then switches to the system’s native boot loader.

Edit 2: Successfully created a boot-able USB using the following procedure on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

  • Formatted USB device with MBR (using Disks)
  • Created a FAT partition (using Disks)
  • Copied contents of to-esp to USB
  • syslinux -i /dev/sdX1 replacing X with the device node
  • dd conv=notrunc bs=440 count=1 if=mbr.bin of=/dev/sdX (using the mbr.bin included with the downloaded Linux image)
  • parted /dev/sdX set 1 boot on

Reference: https://wiki.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php?title=HowTos

I will keep in contact with support to help the development team determine the issue with Dashboard.

4

Thanks for posting your successful process @christopher2!