Sounded like cyberjock was saying dd won't work so i stopped it and now can't even boot to Freenas as it has stopped at "mounting local file systems"
He was saying dd won't work from within FreeNAS, but you were using a Ubuntu Live CD so FreeNAS was not involved in the process at all.
When you were dd'ing, did the drive activity indicator show constant drive access? If so, it
is working, just let it do its thing. dd gives no feedback by default and it may be writing to the entire drive, so it may take hours.
BTW you've been extremely unlucky. I haven't been around as long as the veterans here, but I have to say you've had one hell of a time...it sure isn't supposed to be this way. Hope things turn around for you.