I decided to start again from scratch with the network storage and thats where I found what the problem was. It seems there is something wrong with the permissions of the folder. I wanted to delete all the data but wasn't able to from Windows. I logged on to the Linux server hosting the folder and I can't even delete the data or folder from their either.
I created a new folder and also a new network drive in BE. The backup started and was able to access the folder but it created over 100 4mb .bkf files?? and then the job failed with:
The job failed with the following error: A failure occurred accessing the Writer metadata.
I looked at the job log and it says that the remote agent is running a previous version?? The only reason I can think this has happened is that the agent was installed prior to the SP and hotfix. I'll update it and try again.