Mac going to sleep and improperly ejecting external USB2 OWC Mercury Elite

I am using Mac OS X 10.4.8 (PowerPC), all updates installed. Since I haven't yet upgraded to a new Mac (waiting for Adobe Creative Suite Universal Binary), I have installed a working PCI card that gives me USB 2 capability (from Iogear). I have an external hard drive 300 GB OWC Mercury Elite Pro that has eSata, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, and USB 2. I haven't tried using the Firewire 400 with the external hard drive (my 400 Mhz PowerMac G4 is simply too ancient to have Firewire 800). So, I don't know if my problem extends to Firewire or not, simply because I haven't tried it. Obviously I don't have an eSata card installed in my mac either.
I am running OS X Tiger with the default Power Management settings. I had wiped my internal hard drive and reinstalled OS X and then did the upgrade to OS X 10.4.8 and did the rest of the updates.
I had backed up my music and my photos on my external hard drive prior to wiping my internal mac's hard drive. After reinstalling the OS X and updating OS X, I copied the music and the photos without a hitch to the iTunes and iPhoto libraries, using the USB2 interface. Anyhow, now that I've explained some preliminary background, here's my simple problem (since I'm too stupid to figure this out on my own, I thought I'd post a question here)...
After the copying was done, eventually my mac went to sleep (in about 20 minutes, from what I understand are the default settings). However, on waking, the computer warned me that the external hard drive had been improperly ejected.
This now has happened more than once, and the computer warns me that I might damage the external hard drive (I haven't changed the default formatting of the external hard drive, (Mac OS Extended). Since it has backed up irreplaceable family photos, I do not want this backup to be damaged.
What should I do? Do I really have to prevent my mac from ever going to sleep versus immediately ejecting my external hard drive before I ever walk away to do something?)
Thanks in advance for you help and advice.
P. S., Followup question regarding my external hard drive...
I notice my internal hard drive is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). My external hard drive does not say that it is Jounaled. Does it really help the integrity of my data to have Journaling turned on on my external hard drive? Do I have to reformat it to turn Journaling on???
Thanks once again.

Energy Saver and third party USB often don't go well hand in hand. I would though contact OWC and let them know you are having this problem, since they have a good track record of supporting the Mac platform. In the meantime, use Screen Saver instead of Energy Saver.
And always keep your data backed up at least twice as my FAQ explains:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

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