External Drive Limit?

I'm running into issues with connected external drives that I'm hoping someone will have some suggestions. I have been running my late 2007 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro for a year and a half with 3 external Firewire drives, 2 of which are virtually always in use. One is a FW400 connected to the computer's FW400 port, the other 2 are also FW400 daisy chained on the computer's FW800 port. The one on the end of this chain gets powered up occassionally.
I'm trying to add this eSATA [RAID 0 drive|http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ME8Q7T15GB64> via this [Expresscard/34 eSATA interface|http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/EXP34SATA2P1 >.
Initially after installing the Expresscard and connecting the external RAID drive and rebooting my MBP the drive mounted as expected and I started copying some rather large files to it from the FW400 drive that was connected to the machine's FW400 port. While the copy was in progress I powered up the last of the FW400 drives (on end of daisy chain connected to machine's FW800 port). This power up appears to have caused the FW400 source drive to dismount like it had been powered off. This had the effect of hanging the copy that was in progress. I force quit finder to stop the copy and rebooted the machine and since that time the RAID drive will not mount via the eSATA interface.
I have two things going on that I will do more testing this evening, but this is how I currently am seeing things.
1) The RAID drive does not seem to be "seen" by the computer when using its' eSATA interface. It mounts and operates just fine when connected via the FW400 daisy chained connection. I have tested the eSATA express card with another eSATA drive and it worked fine. I'm not understanding why the RAID drive no longer seems to connect with the eSATA interface.
2) I am not doing any hot connecting, all drives are connected to the computer before powering it up, and the standalone FW400, the first in the FW800/400 Daisy chain is powered up, and the eSATA drive when it was originally working was powered up. What could cause one of the FW400 drives to dismount when powering up the last drive?
All drives have an external power source, either their own power supplies or they are getting power from a powered USB hub.
I'm going to try the RAID drive on another MBP (late 2008) with the Expresscard & eSATA, but can't do that until tonight.
I'm thinking the forced Finder quit may have left something behind somewhere that the drive won't mount via eSATA any longer. I can't imagine that a force quit / reboot could do any sort of hardware damage.

I had an opportunity to do some testing. The RAID enclosure mounts via my daughter's late 2008 MacBook Pro FW800 port consistently. It does not seem to want to mount via my late 2007 MacBook Pro FW800 even with no other Firewire devices attached. If I wait until my MBP is booted up and then insert the eSATA ExpressCard and then connect the RAID drive via eSATA it seems to mount reliably and then so far has been stable once mounted. The effort appears to be worth it, I typically get about 17 to 25 MB/sec when copying to / from the FW400 single disk drives (they are 2.5" drives for portability). I'm getting 50 to 75 MB/sec with the RAID disk as the target and my internal 7200 RPM drive as the source.
I seem to be able to power on and off my other FireWire devices without knocking any other one off so that also seems stable.
I've opened a Tech Support case with OWC about why I can't seem to have the card and drive connected during boot up and see if I can get that resolved.

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External Drive Limit?

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