DS Store, your advise is to take the computer in for service, buy an additional year of warranty for the computer for the **** of it, and then get an external drive? The first suggestion might get this problem resolved, but I'm not sure how your other two suggestions will??
I don't have a solution to this problem either, but I do have slightly more useful information. I bought my macbook pro in September, so it's a 2012 model, and I have also experienced this issue twice. the first time was 2 days ago, and now again tonight. the computer has gone to sleep many times in between without any problems.
When this problem does occur, the hard drive will make a super loud sound as soon as I wake up the machine. In addition, I also have a whitish tint on my screen and what appears to be either the volume control (or brightness) control displayed. In my case it also appears as if the the volume or brightness is being increased on its own (white tick marks fill in). I can also see the login box asking me for my password. Fortunately though, after about 30 seconds of this, the screen will clear up, and I can login as normal.
Unlike Bruce, I'm not having any problems with my iTunes, so I don't think that would have anything to do with it. Here is my educated guess, and maybe Bruce can verify this as well. A few days ago, and about a day before this issue started ocurring, Apple released a special update for 2012 MacBook Pros and Airs which addressed a couple of issues, including USB reliability. I think that this update most likely caused this issue. Anyone else experiencing this or have a solution? Thanks!!