I connect an external HDD to my laptop, which holds all of my music files. It's generally a pretty fast drive (connected by Firewire 800 to my Macbook Pro) and I haven't had issues with it before.
Now, though, virtually anything I do in Audacity causes the program to hang for a LONG time before it performs whatever function I want. Even something as simple as zooming in or deleting a label can result in multiple minute-long waits.
I don't think it's the laptop's RAM, as the laptop seems to perform fine on non-Audacity projects. The slowdowns seem to occur only when there is a need to access this particular drive.
I did also just upgrade Audacity to the latest version, but this had been occurring before.
Could this possibly be a drive that is slowly burning out? It is only three months old, but I know with external HDDs, if they're crapped, they're crapped. This one is a 2TB Iomega, by the way.