I am running Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 and I have this little issue...

I keep all the "My Documents" type stuff in my external Firewire/USB hard
drive, and ever since I've relied on this drive exclusively for my sole
source of all this data, I've been saddled with problems.

The drive works FINE under Windows XP on this same exact configuration
computer I'm using now, using both USB and Firewire. With Firewire, the drive
even sleeps and wakes up when the computer enters and exits standby modes.

Vista has been another story. USB works fine, but just like under XP, it
doesn't sleep when the machine enters and exits standby modes. However, using
Firewire it normally works fine, and it actually enters and exits standby
modes like SP1 was intended to fix, but the drive is now prone to randomly
stopping working, resulting in a need for an improper shutdown. Does anybody
know what I can do to get this thing to work correctly???