[Atheist]

I've got 2 Macs (I'll call them A and B). A has a 500GB USB drive I use for backups. On B, I browsed the network and connected to the A computer and mounted the USB drive. I have a daily backup scheduled on B that backs up to the USB drive on A. If for some reason I reboot A the backup on B fails cuz it can't see the drive. Forgive me for making the comparison, but in my experiences in the Windows world, as long as I have saved the password when I connected to a network resource, it will automatically reconnect. I can't seem to figure out how to make that happen in OS X. I always have to manually reconnect to the shared USB drive for my backups to work. I have tried adding the shared drive as a login item but it usually times out when I log in. However I can then immediately manually connect to the drive. I'm sure I'm just being stupid.... help anyone?

[El Gato]

As part of your daily backup, can you execute an AppleScript that checks to see if the drive is mounted first (and mount it if it's not)?

I don't know a more elegant/easier way to do it. It seems to be a limitation of the Finder (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), so I've always just written up something small in Ruby or AppleScript to take care of it (like mounting drives and printers based on the wireless network).

[Atheist]

I'm surprised there isn't a more elegant solution. This is one area where I must confess I prefer how Windows handles it. As long as I've entered my credentials (and selected the option for it to save my password) the OS should automagically reconnect that resource whenever it's referenced.