Firewire drives dropping out?

[WannabeSQ]

I've got a bunch of firewire drives, all in 2 4 bay cases, each drive has its own FW interface, I have 4 drives in a RAID stripe, as well as a stripe of 3 more, with the 8th being the only non raid disk. The RAID works fine, plenty fast, etc etc etc. Now sometimes, even when in the middle of accessing files (iTunes library stored on this array) the drives will just drop off of My Computer. So I have tried turning them off for extended periods of time (9 hours) unplugging, replugging, all sorts of combos, including restarting the computer, and it is very tempermental to get the drives mounted again, and when I do, I have to "reactivate" my dynamic array in the Disk Management console. Is there anything I can do to prevent this? Like perhaps a better firewire card? I have a cheap card right now, and i'm also using one port of my Audigy 2 (is the audigy my problem) And any tips on getting the drives to mount again?

 

[WannabeSQ]

Bump. I daisy chained all of them to my Audigy, and it seems to be working, but my regular Firewire card doesn't work, It won't show my iPod or my DVD burner. Do I need new drivers or a new firewire card?

 

[WannabeSQ]

Bump again. Anyone know why my firewire card intermittently drops my devices? I have had no problems hooking up to my audigy 2. What gives?

 

[WannabeSQ]

bump yet again, am I the only person with intermittent firewire issues?

 

[WannabeSQ]

bump

 

[WannabeSQ]

bump

 

[WannabeSQ]

bump

 

[corkyg]

Get a Firewire hub and connect it to an independent power source. Sometimes too many devices over load the central power system.

I presently have 4 Firewire devices working, but all have their own power source (scanner, burner, and external data drives.

I was getting droips until I powered them up.

 

[WannabeSQ]

thanks for the reply. That kinda makes sense, although everything but the iPod is self powered, and I have a 480 watt power supply in the computer, so I should have ample power. But I have all of my self powered devices on one channel, and only have the iPod hooked up to one firewire port (different pci card than the other chain) so it better be able to power the iPod. I should also note, that when it is not showing my iPod on the desktop, it does charge the battery, so I'm not sure power is it.