Slow album art import performance on new iTunes library

Hi-
I am experiencing very slow performance when importing album artwork on a recently migrated iTunes library. First some background:
I am running iTunes 7.5.0.20 on WinXP although the exact problem I am experiencing was happening on 7.4 prior to me upgrading.
I have just added a new internal HD to my PC for additional storage. I currently have 2 iTunes libraries on my machine. My original library on the old HD and a new library on the new HD. For the time being, I have an exact copy of all my music files on both my old and new HD which the old and new iTunes libraries reference repsectively. I can toggle between the two libraries no problem by using the hold down shift key method when starting iTunes. I am planning on migrating to the new library/drive (and deleting all music off the old drive) as soon as I feel confident that everything is working correctly on the new drive.
As a side note, I like to manage my own file naming/structure so I do not have the "Keep iTunes Music Folder organized" option checked and I have not consolodated my entire music library under the iTunes folder.
I am experiencing 2 oddities:
1. Whenever I manually import/paste album artwork for an album on the new drive, I get 2 dialog/status boxes for each track. One that says, "Writing ID tags..." and the next says "<Track name>". It takes a good 90 seconds to add album art for 10-12 songs.
On the old drive, if I import the exact same album art for the other copy of the same album, I only get the "<Track name>" dialog box and it completes 4-5 times faster than on the new drive.
2. Everytime I shut down iTunes on the new hard drive/library I get a "Saving iTunes Library..." dialog regardless of if I modify any tags, listen to music, or don't do anything at all.
On the old drive, I only rarely get this dialog, and only after I make obvious changes to the library.
I am really only concerned about issue #1, although my hunch is that these two issues are related. I have attempted to troubleshoot this a ton of different ways to no avail. Any help would be much appreciated.
thanks!

Just RIGHT click the song, and near the bottom of the drop-down menu, hit "get album artwork".

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