FireWire

[strega5742]

I have a MacBook Pro, 17" with 2 gb of Ram. I also try to use an auxilliary hard drive, formated at FAT32, for storage of photos and other items via FireWire. You'll not that I said tray to use an auxiillary hard drive. That's because I have to jump through several hoops to get the drive recognized by the computer. Sometimes it will show up on the desk top automatically. Sometimes I have to use system profile set to Firewire in order to initiate the connection. That can take several minutes if it works at all. There are two firewire inputs on the drive and no USB inputs. I have switched the firewire cord from one input to the other. I have turned the drive on and off. I recently purchased a new firewire cord which worked for a while but is becoming more finicky by the day. TechTool Pro indicates that the firewire bus on the computer is working perfectly.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks...