did you mention you were having troubles with your hard drive ?

if so, (and you didn't ) it also sounds like your drive is failing
and I'd bet it's the sector that holds your directory information for the 7000 files
if the sector is having trouble reading, the OS will read and re-read and re-read until it is satisfied that it has a correct copy
i'd get the drive backed up fast, get spinrite run over it, might help
but do it fast, before it falls over the bucket it's trying to kick