ok thanks Gail - just one last thing however - failed to mention that I have already shrunk the mdf.

Will the action you suggest work ok in this scenario?

i.e. will emptying the NDF effectively append the NDF data back into the MDF whether that is shrunk or not?

I guess it's my narrow understanding of what the original emptyfile command from mdf to ndf actually does, i.e. does it "copy" or "cut" the data?