I resolved my problem down to a barnd new but defective hard disk that had numerous dead sectors. Fortunately, Newegg.com swapped it out for me. Western Digital sent me a "recertified" drive in exchange for the brand new one I had just bought. That struck me as like buying a new plasma TV and getting a recertified tv when the new one is DOA. I sent the recertified drive back and exchanged stuff for a new drive through Newegg. Newegg rocks. I'm happy now; things are working nicely.

I have too much stuff on the system, such as dual monitors, video capture, video surveillance, TV cards, audio capture and whatnot to want to learn how to do all this stuff with Apple.