Question: I have an external drive plugged in to my MacPro via eSATA. At the moment, the disk only mounts if I log in. Since I am using the computer remotely, this is annoying since I have to open up VNC, log in, and log back out. Is there a way to have external drives automatically mount without user log in?
Answer: I found a preference that might do the trick:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin true
In a variation using a boolean value (which should be more accurate):
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool true
You can do the same through Property List editor (if you have it installed):
sudo touch /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount.plistsudo open !$
and set it manually as a boolean:
However, and I’m sorry for that, it appears to be older, and I can’t try it out, so let me know if it works.