[sw rec]

Wait a second, is it a USB or a Firewire drive? If it has both interfaces, you should use the Firewire connection. Pro Tools is not qualified to record to a USB drive.
And you need to do more than "consider" not trying to record to a partition. It might work sometimes, but if you want it to be RELIABLE you need to follow Digi's recommendations and record ONLY to your dedicated audio drive.
Regarding the files you're trying to import...what file types are they?