Mountain Lion Finder "unresponsive" (Beach balls) when trying to copy large amount of files

Before Mountain Lion, using Lion - transfering 999 files from my compact flash card to my SSD hard drive via a FW800 reader was SO easy. Select all, drag and drop and the transfer would begin immediately.

Now, after upgrading to Mountain Lion, I experience at least 60 seconds of beach balls and an "unresponsive" finder. Sometimes it starts to transfer, sometimes I have to relaunch finder.

I've reset the PRAM (although I didn't hear 4 beeps), the SMC, I did verify and repair disk permissions.

Any thoughts on this?

Thank you,

(Late 2011 15 in MBP)