I also have this problem (and a crappy ISP). Most of the times I just go to console mode, unmount the drive (fusermount -u -z /media/name_of_drive) and then remount when connection is available again. However, if I have one nautilus window open the whole system freezes.
I also have this problem (and a crappy ISP). Most of the times I just go to console mode, unmount the drive (fusermount -u -z /media/ name_of_ drive) and then remount when connection is available again. However, if I have one nautilus window open the whole system freezes.