Sorry niemiro for clogging the thread. It was the only place I found any discussion about this strange little issue. My hope was that either I would eventually solve it and then I could provide some insight or maybe d.stinson would figure it out and share some with me.
Just an update for you d.stinson. The drive I had this problem on ended up dying. Now, whether or not these events are related, I can't be certain. Initially I had run chkdsk and let it auto repair some bad clusters and the drive seemed to be operating normally. A week later though, the drive stopped functioning. Just wanted to throw that out there in case they were related.
That being said, I'm sure niemiro will be able to offer more insight on the problem than I and again sorry niemiro for not creating my own thread. I wish you guys the best of luck in resolving this.
Enjoy the upcoming 3 day weekend (if it applies to you)