Doc I think you really need to look at your ram maybe increase it 4gb or more the min requirement for ableton is 4gb. The flash drives aren't really fast enough to to write audio too or use as flash drives for ableton. I think that looks like the problem area. With audio your always best to have one drive with your os and ableton on a separate drive to write your audio to.

What are the Live 9 system requirements?
Intel® Mac with Mac OS X 10.7 or later, or PC with Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10; Multicore processor; 4 GB RAM; 1024x768 display; DVD drive or broadband internet connection for installation;

Required disk space for basic installation:

3GB free disk space.

Required disk space if all included sounds are installed:

Live 9 Suite: 55 GB free disk space
Live 9 Standard: 12 GB free disk space
Live 9 Intro: 6 GB free disk space
Live 9 is compatible with the legacy operating systems Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, Windows XP and Vista up to version Live 9.1.10.

Live 9.2 and later is not compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, Windows XP and Vista. More information here.