external firewire harddrive no longer recognized

[nor]

I have used an external hard drive for the past 3 years with no problems
but, yesterday, all of a sudden, it is no longer recognized by the computer.
When I check the device manager, there is a listing of IEEE 1394 Bus host
controllers and under that are two items: OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394
Controller and Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller.
They are listed as working properly. I assumed, maybe wrongly, that this
means they should be available to external devices. My computer came with
two IEEE ports and I have been using one of those for this drive. I did
switch the connection just in case one was bad. I ran a search on the
Microsoft support site but couldn't find any answer to my problem. My
updates are installed automatically. What I have done is unplug the power
source and firewire source from the device, then plugged it back in after
about 1 minute. In the past, this has worked when the drive suddenly lost
its recognition. This time the red and green lights on the front of the
drive just blink constantly. I am at a loss as to what to do next so would
like to have some help if at all possible. If it is a dead drive, I will
just replace it but if I can still use it I would like to do that. Thanks
for any help.

 

[Gene K]

Try unplugging the external from the computer and from the power source.
Then open it up and firm up all the plugs to their connector jacks. After
that close it up, and reconnect to the computer and power supply to see if
the problem has been fixed.

 

[nor]

Thanks Gene for the suggestions. As far as I can see, there is no way to
open the case to check the plugs. If it helps, it is a small Western Digital
80Gb drive. When I use the CD that came with the drive to see if it might
detect the cause, it says that it cannot find a firmwire connection, even
thought everything is plugged in. I am waiting for Email from Western
Digital to see if they have a suggestion.