Madden 11 hesitates during plays

[8iron]

I popped in M11 for a game this evening, I haven't touched it in a while.

On at least 50% of plays, each side of the ball, the game hesitates or freezes momentarily, then play continues. It can last a fraction of a second to long enough that I notice that the controller is still rumbling.

Some research on the web suggests this might be due to the aftermarket harddrive I added (can't remember if I played since I got it). I've searched here but all the freezing/stuttering threads seem to have to do with menu freezing or total lock up. This doesn't lock the game completely...just makes it near unplayable.

I'm playing on the 360.

Would removing the hard drive just to play Madden fix it (I'm reluctant to take it out even once so I'm asking first). I tried having it look for saves on the on board 4GB memory but that didn't help.

Does 12 suffer from this problem with the value hard drives?

Any other workarounds?

I also have a PS3, if either 11 or 12 works better on that.

Thanks in advance