Is it safe to eject external hard drive while Macbook Pro is on sleep?

Hi guys. This is the external hard drive I use for Time Machine. When in sleep mode, the external hard drive is off, but wakes up periodically when Macbook Pro Retina does its Power Sleep features including periodic back up. So...is it ok to eject external hard drive while on sleep?
Thanks.

Oh. Normally I leave my external hard drive connected to Macbook Pro and rarely eject it. But once in a while, I need to get that hard drive to connect to other computer for file transfer. So the question was when I need to do this (eject hard drive) while Macbook is on sleep, do I need to wake it up and log in and eject? I thought you were saying that I should always eject before the machine goes to sleep. I think I misunderstood you.
So, I need to wake it up, log in and eject before disconnecting it?

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