GarageBand '09 Slow and Beachball when using "Example Ringtone" Template

Question

I'm pretty sure this is just an Apple bug that will need to be squashed at some point, but I'd welcome some other thoughts or advice on this repeatable situation.
Situation:
When launching Garageband all is well until I choose the iPhone Ringtone from the left AND select "Example Ringtone" from the main panel. This bug does NOT occur with either "loop" or "voice" ringtone types or with any other project type (Piano, Electric Guitar, etc)
However, if I select iPhone Ringtone AND "Example Ringtone," I get a beach-ball for a good 2-3 minutes during which my external drives are thrashing.
I have two externals a MyBook USB 500GB for Time Machine and a LaCie 1TB FW800 for other stuff.
If I disconnect the MyBook and perform the same tasks, GarageBand beach-balls for less than a minute...still obviously something wrong there, but better. If I disconnect all external drives, then GarageBand beach-balls for maybe 5 seconds under the exact same conditions. The presence of these external drives is triggering this GarageBand bug!!
I also have iLife 09 on my Unibody MacBook with no external drives and under the same test condiditons, Garageband takes about the same 5 seconds to load the Example Ringtone template.
Soooo, for some inexplicable reason, Garageband is causing massive reads from my external drives making this template pretty much unusable.
Is anyone else having this problem with this particular template and external drives? Can anyone else reproduce if they haven't had the opportunity to try this before now?
Am I missing anything?
Thoughts?

Answer 1

Well, hopefully this new information will be helpful if anyone else runs into this issue. At least until Apple gets a fix in.
The bugged template is called 01. Example Ringtone and is located in the
\Macintosh HD\Library\Application Support\GarageBand\Template\Ringtone folder
Interestingly enough, these templates, according to command info were actually created in GB4, no idea if that is part of the problem.
Anyway, I tried swapping out the template mentioned above with one of the same name that I created and the bug went away.
My steps were as follows:
1) Launch GB and select the Example Ringtone template...wait a long time until GB eventually stops beach-balling
2) GB automatically saves this template under a new name. Usually My Song# and places it in the GarageBand folder of your user directory
3) Rename the file from #2 above to 04 iPhone Ringtone.band and place in the template folder mentioned above
4) When making future ringtones, use the 04 template rather than the 01 provided by Apple until they get it fixed.
Note, you could just replace the Apple provided template rather than adding a new one, but I opted for this approach so I could check after software updates to see if the original problem had been fixed.
I'm still open to the idea that I might have this all wrong, but the evidence seems pretty compelling.
Use Apple's template and 3 minute beach ball. Replace it a near duplicate and the problem goes away.
Hope this helps and if anyone from Apple happens to fly through it would be great to hear about this.