OS X freezes when hard drive goes to sleep

So i have been virtually PC free for about a year now and I am absolutely loving it. I love it so much I use my 12 inch iBook all of the time. It is run constantly as I am an open source developer and I do a lot of coding.
Anyways, about 2 weeks ago my mac started to freeze whenever I would walk away from it for a few moments. This is not the kernle panic screen that i am talking about. I mean that os x just froze. I could not do anything. Nothing responded. It never happened while I was at my computer just when I walked away for a few moments. It would happen at least 3-4 times a day.
I got fed up trying to get it to work so I did a backup and reinstalled everything. It was about time for me to reorganize anyways so this was good. I thoughtmy problems were over until it started freezing again. I sat down at though of what could be making it freeze. The only thing that my mac does when I walk away is to put the hd to sleep. So i turned that setting off in the energy saver and my mac has not froze for the past couple of days.
What I am wondering is...
Has anyone else had this problem? If so what can i do to get it fixed? Is it a hardware problem, ie I need to get my harddrive replaced, or is it an os x problem?
Thanks for any help
Craig

Good thing you turned that setting off. Though it saves energy (and I'm quite the environmentalist) putting the HDD to sleep actually is very hard on it and wears it out much faster because it is constantly starting and stopping. I found this program called Drive Genius that does a pretty good job of diagnosing Hard drive problems. I would suggest you pick up a copy and run some diagnostic test, or maybe try running the apple hardware test off of the Tiger Boot CD.

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OS X freezes when hard drive goes to sleep

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