NEED HELP! AUDIO FOLDER GONE AFTER SESSION CLOSE!

[FrankEEE]

Hi there,

A few days back I was wondering about the disappearance of some audio material (from within PT) - but later blamed myself for not having played close attention as to my actual doing(s).

Just a few minutes back I reproduced a problem I can not figure out. Maybe someone can help me and let me know whether this is a feature or a bug.

---- DESCRIPTION -----
I have a session where things are the way I want them to be. Now I want to have many little 'children' of this session. I figured there's two ways:

Either make a now session from scratch and then import the session data of the individual tracks of the 'template' session. Problem here is I am not aware how PT would like to keep linkage to audio material once the tracks are imported (and it is unfortunate that I can not tell PT to disregard any audio - I just want the tracks and their settings).

Second way is to indicate the 'perfect' session as a 'Stationary Pad' within the finder. And then it is as simple as telling PT (upon opening the Stationary once it asks) to create a new session.

So I decided for latter method. And to make sure I get what I want and only what I want (the tracks and settings) I clear all audio from the audio regions and tell my new session (based on the master template) to just remove the audio but not to delete it (since I don't want to risk losing the originals from the template session). So far so good.
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---- PROBLEM -----
Right - I got myself a a nice child. I start importing my audio material into the audio regions list. I DO CONFIRM TO HAVE THIS MATERIAL SAVED IN THE AUDIO FOLDER PT JUST GENERATED! The I drag my audio regions onto their designated tracks in the Edit window. And fine mix and adjust and trallala ... Save. Quit. Bummer.

I look inside the folder where my 'child' session remains and for a blink of a moment I see my audio folder along with cache and some more files/folders. And a millisecond later those folders disappear ... alltogether with content and the lot. Sad thing is: it's not in the Trash or any other weird location. It's gone. When I open my session I've been workin on for another 40 minutes - it's all gone - except for my settings and automation. But no more audio here?!?!
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WHAT ON EARTH DO I DO WRONG? I know it went a little bit long but at least it gives a good description (I hope).
O yeah - I use a G5/1.6, a DIGI002R, have 1.2GB RAM and work with internal and external FW HD.

And one more thing: did any body experience that since MacOSX10.3.4 it happens annoyingly often that you play around with knbs and pots on your fav plugin (within PT) and sound stops and a message appears about something like 'had to stop ... h/w buffer ... blahblah' (got a short error number I thought - I will make a screen shot next time to be able to properly describe it)?
I had it after PT LE 6.4 with Mac OSX 10.3.3 - but only rarely. Now it happens so often it seems to hinder me from working properly.

Thanks for listening and hope someone has a good idea.