Why does my Thermaltake Silver River 5G USB 3.0 External Drive keep disappearing?

Hi All,
Having major problems with a Thermaltake Silver River 5G USB 3.0 External Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153160).  External drive contains Western Digital 2TB drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136891).  I'm running Mac OS X 10.8.3 on a 2012 Mac Mini. 
Basically, I can plug-in or turn the drive on, it mounts fine. Can run a Time Machine Backup.  At some point (and I think it's when the computer goes to sleep), the drive hangs and I can no longer access it.  Time Machine will hang on "Looking for backup disk".  Drive will still appear in Finder, but I cannot "Eject" it.  I've also tried to do a "umount -f" on it from the Terminal.  Disk Utility still "sees" the device and the disk (partition?), but can't run a repair. 
The only way I've found to fix this problem is to reboot the machine.  I've crawled through the System log, but I don't see anything that points to a problem. 
What else can I check?  I'm have no idea if it's the hard drive, the external USB enclousure, Mac OS X, or the Mac Mini that's the problem.  Please let me know if there is more information I could provide to help solve this problem.  It's really frustrating!!!
Thanks!
-Ben

I received an answer from Thermaltake technical support. I asked if perhaps there was a firmware upgrade to prevent their drive from disappearing. They wrote on 22/04/2013:
Thank you for contacting Thermaltake Customer Service.
No firmware to do it. Just set system to never sleep. System will cut/disconnect the USB when it into sleep mode.
I wrote back saying I have never had to do that with other USB devices. And I routinely allow my system to Sleep. Is that an issue with their drive housings? They replied on 23/04/2013:
that is issue with sleep mode.
I don't know if this occurs with other USB 3.0 drives and Time Machine. Somehow, I doubt it. Anyway, it sounds as though my Thermaltake is destined for eBay...

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