One more question regarding mounting drives

[rock15478]

It's not that it says not to sleep the mac...it's that it says to turn the energy saver completely "off" - as in, don't let it automatically sleep the computer or hard drive if it's been inactive for a certain amount of time. I'm allowed to manually sleep the computer. I just want my backups to run nightly, yet do so in an effective way that my computer and external hard drives aren't running for no reason. I don't do my primary things on this computer, it's only for business clients, yet it still gets used 4-5 times a week.

I'm curious as to what's suggested as far as leaving my backup drive mounted and/or unmounted. Also, leaving the drive on? Do most people leave their backup drives on 24/7 even though they're only running nightly for about 10 minutes? I also want to know how to allow my computer to go back to sleep after running these backups, yet unmount the volume as well...without letting my computer automatically "sleep" as this preference is supposed to be turned off, specifically stated in the software I use.

I've been letting the computer just sleep after SD runs, but it doesn't unmount the volume. I know you already said to just let the computer automatically time out, but I don't think I want to change this setting as my software specifically states not to. I'm sorry if this seems confusing.