Update
New hard drive. Killed old Drive D
It seems the dropouts AND the slow windows performance were all about the (Really old) D drive that was dying, not my C drive. 

Once I cloned the C and moved the project files to the new 1T SATA 3 7200 rpm hard drive everything works fine.
I'm now having my old C (SATA 2 7200) drive tested to check if it's ok and I can then wipe it and bring it back in for my projects to be on a separate drive.
But I'm back in business!! Yes.

I have a Mac Book Pro laptop and just recently built a new up-to-date PC DAW. 

I can gig with my MBP and do mobile sessions with it (I'm running Reason and Studio One on that one). But my Studio DAW runs Sonar X1. Mainly because I have a bunch of hardware synths and along with my familiarity with Sonar, the instrument definitions are crucial to my workflow.

Don't ever "wipe" or erase your old hard drives.
Just put them on the shelf as a back up.
 Hard drives are so inexpensive compared to much of our other equipment we rely on.
With a little research it's not hard to build a quiet, studio grade computer. Things have changed and the power and memory have finally gotten ahead of our demands. Off the shelf computers are more of a pain because they use lower quality components. For the same money you can build one with probably 2x the quality. And quiet. If your not taking the studio on the road, go with a desktop. It will serve you for a few more years than a laptop.