External firewire hard drive not detecting on power up

[RedRooster]

Has anyone had this small issue before where intially your external hard drive will be detected by XP shortly after you power up the enclosure, and then that stops working automatically and you have to unplug/replug the firewire connection to get Windows to detect it?
When I first got this enclosure, all I had to do was power it up and after 10 seconds or so of it booting up Windows would detect it automatically and it'd show up in Explorer. Now when I turn it on, I leave it and nothing happens so I unplug and replug the connection to my laptop and Windows finds it immediately. I didn't change anything in the settings that I remember from before and now.
Its no big deal, but it was convenient before and all that plugging and replugging on my laptop is eventually going to wear out that connector it seems.

 

[corkyg]

This is rare for Firewire externals. Does your external case have its own power source? If not, it should.

 

[RedRooster]

Yep, it has it's own power source. Bytecc
You're saying its rare that windows doesn't detect it just by powering it up?
I'm wondering if there's some setting somewhere that was turned off to cause it to do this. When I first got it, it worked just by turning it on, for a few months. Then out of the blue(I am very careful of what I change, and don't go changing things wildly) it stopped auto detecting. Every rebuild of the machine since hasn't fixed the problem.
Maybe there's some updated firewire drivers or something? I dunno.

 

[corkyg]

Most of the time, when a Firewire device gets "lost" it is due to lost data or power in the connection. Try a different cable and a different port. Are you using a mobo port or a PCI card port?

 

[RedRooster]

It's actually connected to a laptop with only one firewire port. The back of the enclosure has two firewire connections, with no distinction between the two so I switched to the other and it does the same thing.
It could very well be the cable, I never thought of that. I don't have it bending or kinked or anything, but I may have pinched it briefly along the way when moving the desk. Thanks for the tip!