Bizarre Final Cut Pro Problem

[animal]

You're likely right about the PC virus not afffecting Macs but please 
remember my Emac started coughing, becoming sluggish and acting 
stranger than normal AFTER I tried to open that attachment.  FCP 
COINCIDENTALLY has also gradually deteriorated and is almost unusable 
now since the attachment.  I have long since disposed of the evil 
attachment.  I doubt a Mac virus would have died out before I bought 
Norten Antivirus to diagnose it.

I've now tried capturing DV to three different Firewire external hard 
drives via FCP on the Emac - and experience the same (now immediate) 
freezing problem on all 3 and capturing to the internal.  All 3 plus 
the internal Emac hard drive have 10GB or more space.  That is until I 
try to capture DV, the computer color wheel starts spinning and then 
the scratch disk ends always ends up with 1.43GB of space left and the 
clip file varies in size to whatever adds up to 1.43GB of space left.

I'm not disagreeing it's a hard drive or software  issue but 4 hard 
drives going at once or 3 external Firewire drive bridges??

I've tried everything you folks have suggested.  I haven't gotten to 
it, but my only option to use FCP now - as I see it - is to erase the 
Emac hard drive, reinstall software and pray everything works after 
that.

Thanks for all the help
Lynn