Hi Thomas
I have been following your agony and thought I should throw my two cents worth in.
1. I have an installed 10GB hard disk with 4 2.2 GB particians as per the 9000PRO manual.
2. The hard disk was formatted originally using the 9000PRO operating system (I think version 1.3). I experienced none of your problems regarding access times.
3. Since then, I have upgraded the OS when they became available and am now running the current 2.1(?) version, with no access performance problems.
4. The access times to the hard disk from disk access or pop-up is about 3-5 seconds, consistantly.
5. From my experience with adding hardisks into computers - access performance problems can be attributed to some hardware set up problem or fault. The cable connecting to the hard disk may be faulty, or not connected correctly. The hard disk itself may be faulty. To check these if possible take out the hard disk and cable and install it into a "normal" pc. Running disk tools like nortons etc over the disk would then indentify if theere is a problem and the source of the problem. The disk may actually run properly in the pc. This would then suggest that everything is OK in the disk and cable hardware and perhaps point to the keyboard motherboard or keyboard operating system as the problem. To check that out ask your friendly local dealer / technician to run diagnostics over the keyboard's motherboard.
One other thought - did you format using the 9000PRO operating system format utility, or was the disk already formatted and set up before its installation? I would make sure that the disk was formatted with the standard 9000PRO operating system.
I have heard and read about disks of certain brands and manufactures not operating properly in the 9000PRO. I have not experienced that. Maybe I have been spared the drama. Just recently I took home from work an "old" 2GB SCSI drive to see if the thing would connect through the 9000PRO SCSI port. Blow me down, it did, first up and without a problem, and, with about 3-5 second access time. I now use it to back up my internal hard disk. The point here is that on both my internal hard disk and SCSI disk they were nothing special - just what was availbale at the time. This tells me that the 9000PRO is reasonably tollerant (foregiving) as to which manufacturers hard disk is used. So thus I would not suspect hard disk compatability to be your problem. Usually they work or they don't.
I am sorry for being long winded, and not giving much good news. However I believe from my experience, your problem is abnormal and is also fixable, with the help of your own persistance and some friendly local expertise.
All the best in your struggle,

Jon.