Much appreciated, I will do that. I have been using nonce calc 3.0 and other than making the mistake once, I have actually been leaving 10% of the drive empty.
I am currently moving as I type this, so I need to finish packing and prepping for tomorrow morning. I will give it another whirl on buffer mode but even than it failed last night...
As far as how much data I have, I have 5 x 5TBs at the moment, but the plan was to keep expanding, so optimized plots would be ideal, but I rather get them plotted and try using a plot optimizer if it will at least get the job done.. feeling discouraged this first week !!