How do I (re)mount missing Firewire drives? Why do they vanish?

I can't see a way to change the OS directly, but here's how you would mitigate it:

  • set up a script to parse diskutil list and possible diskutil cs list and have it mount any volumes that are connected and unmounted
  • use a tool like Launch Control or Lingon to wrap that script in a launchd trigger mechanism to call it periodically.