[minister]

when you went to track drums, did you use the same hard drive?

you may have a problem drive...or its directory could be screwed up. try "disk warrior", it has saved my arse a few times. you can rebuild the directory and optimize the drive. or, more drastically, copy everything off of it, and do a low-level format.

did you try recording to anothet drive? borrow one...

i am very suspect of firewire for audio -- i have lots of problems. no problems with my scsi's on my ATTO card.

also, did you try repairing the permissions in disk utility? that often fixes sluggish OSX situations.