Already I have made some progress with this, It would seem I had some how wrote a superblock to the drives hence mdadm picking the drives up as potential raid devices so I used the mdadm option --zero-superblock on each drive and solved that little issue. On to the next problem! -- Regards, James ;) Stephen Leacock - "I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so." - http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/stephen_leacock.html