Firewire problems

[Francois Barbary]

Hello all.
haven't been following the list too closely lately but i have a very 
weird problem... and before i take it to the repair shop i thought id 
ask some intelligent cube owners for their advise..

i have a fw hd it's a 60 gb maxtor 5600 rpm (ithink) it a very quite 
model. just 1 year old.
but the problem isn't really the drive... when i flick my switch to 
turn the drive on it doesn't ... at least not right away like it used 
to (even a 5 second wait is normal) but now itls minutes. sometimes up 
to 10!  once it spins up and tries to mount (i hear r/w noise) it 
momentarily spins down then back up! and then tries again (same pattern 
of r/w noise) sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. when it does mount 
it's only usable for about 10 mins. then it spontaneously spins down 
and back up again but this time it's unmountable. it won't even 
recognize that its on (lookin in terminal)

any ideas what this problem could be?
thanks alllot!!!
Francois

(also experience usb speaker problems... cutting out then back in later 
  many people reported this problem too, could it be related?)

ps another funny thing is that when i have my ipod connected daisy 
chain style it works fine even with the wacky hd!

i think this problem may be because the fw ipod draining too much power 
(i always (8  months) connected it daisy chain style until recently )