External hard drive read only unless you unplug and replug in

I've got an external firewire hd (fw 400 with an adapter) connected to a MacBook Pro 2009 running OS X 10.6.2. It's been working flawlessly until recently. I'm not sure what happened and I don't think it's the result of any system upgrade or modification, but now, at startup, the drive shows up as read-only. But, if I eject, unplug, and replug it in, or eject, turn if off, and back on, it mounts correctly as read/write. Get Info on the drive shows that it should be read/write. I've tried repairing permissions and doing a repair disk from Disk Utility, but no problems are found.
Any idea on what the problem/solution is?

I'm not sure where the issue is but you do you do have it running. One thing you can do to see if it's the computer or the drive is to get another FW drive and connect it and see if it works. If the Mac automatically detects it (like it should!) then that tells you it something with the original drive and if it doesn't then it's obviously something with the MBP. If you take it to an Apple Store and explain the issue they can probably provide another drive to test it out.
If it turns out to be the drive (that's my guess) then it might be a power supply problem or the FW connection, a hunch tells me it would be the power supply.
At least you are finally making progress and can use the drive though!

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