My unit as noted above has worked flawlessly until now. The above issue froze the unit in an orange light mode and was unresponsive to turn off or on. I unplugged the unit and left it off for a weekend to return, plug back in and the unit again was unresponsive for 5-8 minutes wherein it pulsed the fan and went into the normal blue light operational mode.
During it unresponsive period, the MAC was not seeing the drive.
Lastly, is there some type of updates or maintenence that should be performed at certain intervals?