http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_startup.html
This page briefly describes the sequence of events that happen when Mac OS X boots.
Posts under ‘OS X’
Mac OS X System Startup
Mount a firewire drive at boot on OS X
I run OS X on my desktop (settle down now, more on this later).
The default behavior of OS X does not mount external drives at boot time. This is very frustrating. The following command will configure your mac to mount all connected disks at startup (not just upon a user logging in).
sudo defaults [...]