External Hard Drive not sleeping or waking

Hi I have a mac mini with Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2. I recently purchased a iomega 2 TB external hard drive that came pre loaded with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) pre formatted on it. I use 800 FireWire for the connection. I had no problems with the drive mounting and transferring files until I put my computer to sleep. I took me some time to figure out that the sleep function was the cause of the problem I was having. The drive would still be listed in finder after my computer woke but when accessed finder would freeze up and I would get the spinning cursor. Also when I left it to sleep over night I would find the drive off and an error that it had been ejected wrong.
I watched the drive when I put my computer to sleep get the sleep command and flash for a second and start to sleep but then come on again as if there was an error in the sleep command from my mac. If I wake my computer again to see the action of the drive it then goes to sleep when my computer is waking. I am guessing the command is the same to the drive from my mac. Wake or sleep, it just depends on the drives current state as to whether it sleeps or wakes.
My fix so far is to not let my computer sleep at all. As well I have to choose in system preferences to not allow the drives to sleep. Did notice after some time the external hard drive will sleep anyway from idle time but now my mac is not sleeping obviously. Or I have to eject the disk manually and then turn off the external hard drive then put my computer to sleep.
Am I missing something here? It's either a hard drive error or a software bug in Lion.

Hi,
Please post the HP product number for your PC. How to Find the HP Model Number and the HP Product Number or let HP automatically find your PC model number and HP network attached printers. This will allow others to review your issue, make suggestions and review your responses. This is usually the best way to get assistance.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

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