External Hard Drive Spins Every Time Finder Window Opens

I've noticed one major problem since installing SL. Every time I open a finder window or get a "Save as.." dialogue box or something like that, all connected external hard drives have to boot up and start spinning. This makes what is supposed to be a faster OS experience much much slower and frequently causes Firefox to crash. In fact I have to reboot several times a day because firefox crashes and then wont allow me to open it again.
Is there any way I could possibly fix this? I've tried repairing disk permissions and such to no avail. Any help would be amazing. Thanks.

As another SL user who's frustrated with this issue, this seems to be the only fix. However, doesn't unchecking this box in prefs mean that the external drive will never sleep? I've spoken with Lacie support, and they confirmed that this would reduce disc life.

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