Firewire hot-pluggable, not cold-pluggable

It seems, that FireWire or IEEE1394 as it is officially called, is hot-pluggable, but not always cold-pluggable. That means, that self powered FireWire peripherals should be turned on and then plugged in, and afterwards unplugged and then turned off. Supposedly many problem with Firewire peripherals, especially hard drives, can be solved through this handling.