Thank you, Daniel.
I am afraid the sleep option is not practical for me -- not sure where to put it as the problem occurs at multiple spots. I will need to dig deeper to find out how to replicate the problem with regularity.
To be clear, all the read-write operations carried out by each process are sequential. Think a large number of scripts running on each subject separately and outputs are in separate directories. For the timing to help, it would have to be that afni programs return before the write operation is complete. Does this occur when using compression?
All the best,
Ziad