Ok, ive done a bit of testing to see what the problem might be. Tried removing the secure access to the directory but that had no impact. Because we use a .htaccess file to direct traffic I thought that might be intefering so I set up the test folder on a different server but it still was experiencing the same problem (http 404 not found).
I appreciate the help I've gotten i just need to get over the line with this one.