disk not ejected properly

This is a long-running and persistent problem that may at this point only be cured by never sleeping your computer.

It is possible that a fix is on the way. LaCie support recently advised me that "Apple has recently acknowledged problems within current versions of Mac OS X that can cause external drives to become improperly ejected during system sleep. Patches from Apple to correct these issues are forthcoming." We shall see ............

PS - If you have Mavericks, it is not clear that the computer ever can go fully asleep (i.e., off).. I currently evade the improper ejection of external drives by unchecking any option involving computer (iMac) HD sleep. Sleepless is not ideal.