Aye =D I suspected this had been the case, according to a friend with a ton more ram (who's machine also choked on it a few times to his dismay.)

Thanks for confirming. ^^

Belatedly, the attached file is actually the save game, -not- the modpack. It's too big for me to upload without making a trip to a local college campus xD

I attached the save file without the mods =D There isn't any difference for me loading with or without mods. I will need to find a different network to upload the mods from, if it's necessary.

I was running this game for a few weeks and leaving it idle every day while out at work, it has some mods on it, but the problem persists even without them and doesn't seem to be changed at all.
The last few days I have noticed the periodic autosave was taking an unusually long time at around the ...