Problem: Moving Files around on an external HD

Up until tonight, when I moved files around on my external HD the OS would just make note in the file system that the location of the file had changed, which took less than a second. Now I'm seeing a 'Moving "file" to "Folder"' dialogue box for every single file I relocate like it is physically moving the file on the disk. I am not moving the files to a different disk, internal or external. I recently verified the disk and repaired disk permissions. This is the only change I can think of recently other than regular OS updates. I'm on the latest (10.10.5) fwiw. Any help getting files to move back to the way the OS used to handle it?

EDIT: Okay, I've made some more observations. When I drag and drop the files into a different folder the OS seems to be copy/pasting the file in the new folder then sending the original file to the trash can. I tried to right click>cut, but cut was greyed out. Same thing in the Edit menu. What gives?