Accessing external drives freezing computer

I posted 2 weeks ago thinking it was an iTunes problem. I've realized it's bigger than that. I have 4 external drives with everything from my iTunes, to thousands of photos, work files, back up drives, etc. For some reason, if the drives go into "resting" mode or whatever you call it, if I try to access them again, they will freeze. I first noticed it trying to play iTunes files, and iTunes would freeze every time I tried to play a song. I thought it was a specific drive, but moved my whole iTunes folder (all 250 gigs of it) to a different drive, and same thing.
My biggest problem is that I can't backup my home drive now because the externals freeze half way through trying to back every thing up. It's happened 6 times in a row now. I can't start in safe mode to run disk utility. My computer freezes on the Apple logo screen for 10 minutes before my computer sounds like it is going to blow up. I can verify and fix permissions, but if I try to verify disk, my computer freezes.
I can't ever force quit the applications either. It won't work. I have to hard restart every time.
I'd like to be able to reinstall my operating system... but because I can't back up my home disk, I'm at a loss.
What in the world can I try??

In the majority of cases, like cases by Seagate, Western Digital, LaCie, Maxtor, yes, they go for cheap.
You could pull those drives from those cases, (assuming they're SATA), & use something like what I've gone to, and the Drives will actually run cooler than even Fan equipped enclosures...
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/FWU2ES2HDK/

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