IMac no Longer Recognizes External Hard Lacie Hard Drive via Firewire 800

It worked for 1 year. Time machine backed up fine. Over the past month it has gone in and out of recognizing the external Lacie d2 quadra via the Firewire800 port. I've tried turning off botht the iMac and the hard drive. unplugging both for 30 minutes. i can't get the external hard drive to connect in teh finder window anymore. should i buy a new firewire cable? is that the simple answer. Can these go bad?

You should try a new or different FireWire cable.
If the drive also has a USB 2.0, try connecting it with a USB cable. Does it work that way?
Also, try running Disk Utility (assuming the drive is seen the sidebar and able to be selected) and running +Repair Disk+ on the +First Aid+ tab. This procedure can take a long time on the drive that is used for the Time Machine archive.

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