Mac Forum / General / Hardware / November 2006

Speaking only for myself, not for the OP:

1)  My desktop machine is a laptop that I often unplug and take with me,
either to other outside locations or even inside my house.  If I forget
to dismount the external HDs before unplugging the FW cable, I get lots
of angry warnings (and if I remember, it's one more little tedious task,
just when I'm rushing off somewhere).

2)  Less clutter on desktop.

3)  Less chance of accidentally doing something unintended to the HDs
when working on and switching between a bunch of open apps and windows.

4)  Less power consumption, maybe longer life(??), if external HDs are
spun down when not in use.

I just now ran a quick test, logging off of an account and then logging back
onto the same account and the external partitions, which were not mounted
prior to the logging off, mounted.  

The two AppleScripts, "Mount External" and "Unmount External" work. What
doesn't work is the Automator workflow that should do the same thing as the
"Unmount External" script.

Here's the "Mount External" script:

====================

tell application "Finder"
    if not (exists the disk "Nightly Backup") then
        try
            do shell script "diskutil mount `disktool -l | grep 'Nightly Backup' | sed
's/.*\\(disk[0-9s]*\\).*/\\1/'`"
        end try
    end if
    if not (exists the disk "Week 1 Backup") then
        try
            do shell script "diskutil mount `disktool -l | grep 'Week 1 Backup' | sed
's/.*\\(disk[0-9s]*\\).*/\\1/'`"
        end try
    end if
    if not (exists the disk "Week 2 Backup") then
        try
            do shell script "diskutil mount `disktool -l | grep 'Week 2 Backup' | sed
's/.*\\(disk[0-9s]*\\).*/\\1/'`"
        end try
    end if
    if not (exists the disk "Week 3 Backup") then
        try
            do shell script "diskutil mount `disktool -l | grep 'Week 3 Backup' | sed
's/.*\\(disk[0-9s]*\\).*/\\1/'`"
        end try
    end if
    if not (exists the disk "Week 4 Backup") then
        try
            do shell script "diskutil mount `disktool -l | grep 'Week 4 Backup' | sed
's/.*\\(disk[0-9s]*\\).*/\\1/'`"
        end try
    end if
    if not (exists the disk "Video") then
        try
            do shell script "diskutil mount `disktool -l | grep 'Video' | sed
's/.*\\(disk[0-9s]*\\).*/\\1/'`"
        end try
    end if
end tell

====================

Here's the "Unmount External" script:

====================

tell application "Finder"
    if (exists the disk "Nightly Backup") then
        try
            eject "Nightly Backup"
        end try
    end if
    if (exists the disk "Week 1 Backup") then
        try
            eject "Week 1 Backup"
        end try
    end if
    if (exists the disk "Week 2 Backup") then
        try
            eject "Week 2 Backkup"
        end try
    end if
    if (exists the disk "Week 3 Backup") then
        try
            eject "Week 3 Backup"
        end try
    end if
    if (exists the disk "Week 4 Backup") then
        try
            eject "Week 4 Backup"
        end try
    end if
    if (exists the disk "Video") then
        try
            eject "Video"
        end try
    end if
end tell

====================

Thanks for responding!