fsck or fstab config question

[Rashkae]

pkaplan1 at comcast.net wrote:
> I'm running 10.04 on a laptop and have an external USB drive (/dev/sdb*) in my office that is connected to a base station. When I boot in the office and the drive is connected, everything is normal. When the drive is not connected, the boot process pauses to tell me that the external partitions on the drive can't be found (duh!, it's not connected) and awaits manual input to skip the step before starting the display manager. If I select skip, booting completes normally, but the next time I try to boot with the drive connected, all five partitions are subject to an fsck check, which can last up to five minutes. 

> 
> 
> --------- 
> Is there something here that is forcing an fsck and if so, what needs to be changed, either in fstab or in the fsck configuration. 
> 

Nothing there that is forcing the fsck.  Must be a new fandangled 
feature that keeps track of filesystems that fail to start between boots.

As a suggestion, change the filesystem options (defaults, currently) to 
noauto,user That should prevent your computer from trying to mount the 
non-existant drives on every boot, while still allowing the gnome volume 
manager to do the right thing when the drive is plugged in.