computer can\'t find firewire

I have a western digital 80meg/8meg buss drive in an ADS pyro firewire box that seems to have all the right specs. I installed the drive to initialize and partition with drive settup as instructed. I was led to believe the best way to comfigure the system was to have everything on the external drive so off i went and everything seemed to be fine--I was recording up to 8 tracks and playing back 24 just fine, but every few days I'd push it too far and crash, usually no big deal but then the computer can't find the firewire drive. At first I would just fiddle with the cable and restart 5 or 6 times, sometimes getting that clicking-wirring sound of the drive trying to find the computer(?) and eventually it does find it and everything is fine for another week or so, but it seems to be getting worse, and now this last time its been days of restarts and it still hasn't found the drive!! I use a G4/400 and have upgraded to PT32 and I can't tell if it got worse with the upgrade, but I can't figure out why something doesn't show up even if it won't mount. I'm pretty much stumped and would appreciate any advice. Thanks in advance

MyGodMan that's horrible news--but are you talking about the drive or the box?

Both.... Actually I'm not sure which was causing the problem, but I just decided to end the misery and buy a new drive. It did work a couple times though. I really dont know what to tell you from a technical point of view. I'm just sharing my experience..

heres is one fix that works for me i connected my QPS CDRW F-W drive first to my mac F-W port than from the QPS CDRW drive to the ADS pyro box. i have a WD HD in my pyro box it work good as long as the QPS drive is first in the chain

Thanks fer the tip....I'll try anything at this point!! Should try it tonight and I'll let you know how it goes...

Holy Crap!!!! it worked!! I plugged the firewire drive into the CD burner and lo and behold the computer found the drive for the first time in a week. Preliminary testing looks good, plays back 27 tracks just fine. let me do some more testing and I'll be back in a couple of hours....

sorry for the delay------Well, it only worked that one time and it was back to the same old problem. Thanks to all who offered advice. Just once I would like to take a piece of non-working crap like this, set it in the middle of the stee, and just drive my car over it!!!