Mysql CREATE statment are really slow (Mac OS X / Macport install)

I recently noticed that recreating the database for the web application I am working on is taking a lot of time. I had just reinstalled Mysql from Macport...

I am getting really lousy performances, for example :

0.293437004089 seconds for

CREATE TABLE blockip ( 
id INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, 
ip VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL DEFAULT '', 
username VARCHAR(80) NOT NULL DEFAULT '', 
time INT(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0', PRIMARY KEY (id) ) 
DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci TYPE=MyISAM;

On another machine, nearby I get 0.0016529560089111 seconds for the same query.

The trouble seems to be somewhat related to the disk : disk usage goes really high when I start creating the 70 tables in my database.

Any ideas where to start for a clue ?