System overload related to disk activity peaks

I get frequent system overload messages and they are starting to get irritating. I have read all the threads and followed all the instructions, but to no avail. I installed Activity Monitor and the overloads only occur when there are peaks in disk activity while data is being read. What does this mean and how can this help me solve the problem??
I have a MacBook with 2Gb RAM. I use a MBox2 Mini (USB) audio interface, 7200rpm firewire hard drive and Logic 8. All my audio and projects are on the external HD. I use BFD2, which seems to increase the number of overload messages. BFD's data is on the external HD, too.
Any help would be appreciated
Julie

I'm grateful for you replies, Erik.
Eriksimon wrote:
So it seems that often there was paging going on - a lot. Only on one occasion there wasn't any. I think the BFD samples may be responsible for that. You could test that by freezing the BFD track(s).
Logic doesn't give me the option to freeze BFD tracks. BFD is on a multi-timbral software instrument track. I route the outputs from BFD to aux tracks in Logic. None of these have the freeze icon in the track header. So I'm unable to test this.
During bouncing? Do you mean you only bounce realtime? Why not bounce offline? It is faster and you can listen to the result in iTunes, without overloads...
I bounce realtime because offline causes problems with BFD - ie. cymbals are cut short. However, I've recently been given some advice on the BFD2 forum which should help with this (but I haven't had a chance to try it yet).
I guess I'm going to have to upgrade. Wish I could afford a desktop!!
Julie

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