New WD Passort drive loses connection

I'm a new iMac user. I've had my iMac for just under 3 months. About a month ago, I purchased a Western Digital My Passport Studio external drive from my local Apple store. It's connected via the FireWire 800 cable. For no apparent reason, the connection to the WD drive will drop, and the only way to get it recognized again is to restart the system.
Does anyone have suggestions for why this might be happening and how I can prevent it? Also, is there a way for me to get the drive recognized again without restarting? Disconnecting and reconnecting the drive has no effect.
Thanks!

External WD drives do not have the best reputation on these forums; if you're still within a store return period, I would seriously consider returning it and purchasing any of these:
LaCie
G Drive
OWC (macsales.com)
If not, be prepared that it may not be recognized at some point, so have a "backup the backup" plan in place.

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