The Drive Upgrade Guide says that if it refuses to nuke the drive, you just rm -r /drive0/fids and then the builder will nuke the drive. Since this was a new drive and would not have contained a "fids" directory when I received it, I don't think it was the nuke protection that was the issue.

So I believe the builder did the correct thing and did indeed nuke the drive, and that it has the correct level of protection. So I don't think you need to change the builder image.