Why does external hard drive have to wake up?

I understand that in Finder if I want to look at a file then it might have to wake up my external hard drive.
Why is it the case that when I perform a seemingly unrelated action - such as bringing up a dialogue box in Photoshop, viewing developer tools in Chrome, or playing the next track of a file sitting on a folder on my desktop - forces the external drive to wake up, and forces me to wait until the wakeup whilst it does so?
Yes, I want the drive to sleep as much as possible. It's only there for time machine backups which I rely on, and the less the drive is spinning the lower the chances are of the drive having an issue. So turning off "sleep when inactive" is NOT a solution.

Not sure why but I had the same issue when I was using FW drives and ML.  Later I upgraded to Mavericks and changed over to USB3 drive with my new Mini and now no longer have that issue.  Must be something between the OS and the type of drive but not sure what the critical component is.

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    David Robinson Art wrote:
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    Message was edited by: new2appletv

    Hi Andy,
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  • Why are external hard drives and similar continually self-ejecting under Yosemite?

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    Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
    Feedback
    Or you can use your Apple ID to register with this site and go the Apple BugReporter. Supposedly you will get an answer if you submit feedback.
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