Mid 2009 13.3" Macbook Pro random freezing issue

Hi all,
I had a 2009 13.3" Unibody Macbook and last week purchased a 13.3" Macbook Pro. I had installed 4GB of RAM in the MB myself, and it had worked fine for the month I owned it.
I backed up my MB with an external USB hard drive using Time machine, restored from this backup on my MBP and moved the 4GB RAM over.
When using the MBP I get random freezes lasting between 1 and 3 seconds, occuring every 5 to 30 minutes.
Could someone please advise a good way to diagnose this problem further? I am guessing it is not the RAM as it worked fine whilst in the MB.

I have an update!
I made an appointment with a local Apple Genius Bar and talked to a technian. He said it was neither the RAM nor the Hard Drive at fault.
His only thoughts were that a software issue was the root cause. I have been doing some serious investigating this morning and figured it out. Viewing system.log in Console shows:
SMS::infiniteIntTimerEventHandler ERROR: we have infinite interrupts, disabling
At exactly 5 minute intervals. These correlate with the freezes (to the second).
SMS refers to the Apple Sudden Motion Sensor. I disabled this by doing "sudo pmset -a sms 0" in Terminal, rebooted and everything is fine.
I have no idea why the SMS thinks the Macbook is falling every 5 minutes, but when it occures the hard drive heads are locked down to prevent damage, which is a perfect reason as to why iTunes would crash but Spotify (streaming internet music) does not.
Problem solved!
Edit:
In reply to some questions posted by other members (thank you by the way).
I did install EFI 1.7 update. I did not use the Migration assistance. At some point I will do a fresh install then pick and choose parts from a backup rather than using a full Time Machine Restore. This could still have been the root cause of the issue, but it is hard to tell.
Thanks guys!
Message was edited by: mynamestom

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