file copy hangs system

I have a home server "appliance" that hums along just fine with 8.04 Server. I decided to do an upgrade today so I pulled the hard drive, installed 10.04 Server on the fresh hard drive, then hooked up my old drive as a slave hoping to copy my home folder over. After copying a dozen or so files, the system locked up hard. I had to reboot.
I've tried everything I can think of, even putting the old drive in a USB hard drive enclosure and using my laptop to copy files to a Samba share on the new drive. Same thing. Locks up after a few files.
I have found similar reports of file copy hangs, like this one with NFS:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1478413&highlight=copy+file+hang
and 574693 which is for Nautilus, but this is copying files from an ext3 partition on one disk to an ext4 partition on another disk using the command line.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: linux-image-2.6.32-23-generic 2.6.32-23.37
Regression: Yes
Reproducible: Yes
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-23.37-generic 2.6.32.15+drm33.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-23-generic i686
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.21.
AplayDevices: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Architecture: i386
ArecordDevices: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
AudioDevicesInUse: Error: command ['fuser', '-v', '/dev/snd/by-path', '/dev/snd/controlC0', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D0c', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D0p', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D1c', '/dev/snd/pcmC0D1p', '/dev/snd/timer'] failed with exit code 1:
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.values: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
CurrentDmesg:
 [ 23.324086] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
 [ 89.456090] longhaul: Failed to set requested frequency!
 [ 89.456109] longhaul: Enabling "Ignore Revision ID" option.
 [ 89.667431] Marking TSC unstable due to cpufreq changes
 [ 89.667675] Switching to clocksource acpi_pm
Date: Wed Jul 7 09:22:35 2010
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=198a3e8f-3414-49cb-bde6-88322be9072c
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100427)
IwConfig:
 lo no wireless extensions.

 eth0 no wireless extensions.
Lsusb:
 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
MachineType: ECS M789CG
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-23-generic root=UUID=58496a51-c89c-4795-8ac9-10c481b501ab ro quiet
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
RelatedPackageVersions: linux-firmware 1.34.1
RfKill:

SourcePackage: linux
dmi.bios.date: 04/02/01
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: Version 07.00T
dmi.board.name: M789CG
dmi.board.vendor: ECS
dmi.board.version: 1.0
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 0123ABC
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: ECS
dmi.chassis.version: 1.0
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvrVersion07.00T:bd04/02/01:svnECS:pnM789CG:pvr1.0:rvnECS:rnM789CG:rvr1.0:cvnECS:ct3:cvr1.0:
dmi.product.name: M789CG
dmi.product.version: 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: ECS