It seems like you've solved your problem BUT:
It seems very unusual that SONAR should react this way unless some of the installation files were on that other drive.
By default SONAR wants to install everything to your C: drive so in case you changed something this seemingly resolved problem may come back to bite you in other ways.
I'd have a close look at where all my SONAR associated files are ie besides the project and other audio files. Perhaps you have your picture cache Folder on that external drive and that was the issue. Picture Cache folder should always be on the same drive as your SONAR program.