W530/Win7 USB disk controller errors on sleep/resume

[Lurker212]

I'm running a brand new W530, Win7 Pro with a new WD My Book 1170, 2 TB USB3 external drive. I'm seeing frequent disk controller errors (event ID=11) reported from the drive when putting the machine to sleep as well as when resuming. At times, the machine no longer recognizes the drive when resuming. Both WD and Lenovo utilities report that the drivers are up to date. The disk is not encrypted. The WD-supplied disk diagnostic runs clean, and I'm not seeing errors during normal use of the drive.

I use SyncBack to do a backup at 3AM, but it has failed several times because it can't find the drive when it wakes the machine up. There are always event ID=11 errors in the log when this happens. I submitted a help request to WD a few days ago, but haven't received any response.

Any suggestions on how to further diagnose and correct the problem would be most welcome.

TIA