I've posted similar questions like this before but I guess that I'll simply
keep trying.

I have a Windows XP OS on a Dell XPS T700r machine (yeah my machine is now
about 3.5 years of age). But in any case, I have one annoying problem with
my firewire setup. When I purchased an external Maxtor 80GB Firewire drive
about 16 months ago or so, I had no worries. I plugged the drive into my
Friewire card and took off.

However, when I tried to daisychain other firewire devices to it, all heck
broke loose. It's either the Maxtor drive would become invisible or the
device I daisy chained would. To get it visible again, I would have to
unplug the drive and its firewire cable and then reattach them.

Recently I purchased another Maxtor drive that seems to behave itself more
but when I tried to copy contents from the old drive to the new via the
firewire interface, a few minutes into the copy, the OS complained that it
couldn't locate the 80GB drive anymore. I had to attach my new drive to a
USB2.0 interface and perform the copy that way.

Ultimately I'm going to get rid of my 80GB drive but before do, I just have
to know why the bloody thing acts in this unusual manner. Has anyone
experienced something similar and if so did they find a solution?

P.S. The new Maxtor drive I purchased is the new 5000XT