Hi Paul
Thank you for the response... have attempted the dummy partition method previously and the system would reach the listing of connected devices and basically hang there forever. Found a work around however it involves shuffling around the partition order... not ideal!
What I am attempting to do is create three partitions, the first would be the "boot", the second would be the "root" and the third would be an "EPD" ( External Persistent Device ) to store data on that I would like to share between different distributions allowing me to swap out without the fear of data loss.