Intro

ET OSX is a list of useful tools for the MacOS X, most of which live in the Applications folder on my startup drive. It started as a 'what's on my Mac' page on my personal site but quickly evolved into a blog of its own. I'm trying to focus most on of the tiny but useful utilities that sometimes save you lots of trouble and effort, and to omit for the most part the list of big guns, that one normally uses on a daily basis. The list serves two purposes, lets me easily answer 'how do I do this on the Mac' questions asked by other users, and helps me remember answers to the same questions myself.

Howto: Automate backups to external drive with Check For Disk

Thanks to the wonderful Automator action Check for Disk made available from automator.us, you can setup an Automator workflow that will execute your backup script/launch your backup app every time you plug that external volume in your computer. Here's what you have to do:
1. Go to automator.us to download & install the Check for Disk action; read the online example while your at it.
2. Start up Automator.app and create a new workflow and add Check fro Disk as the first action. Setup any number of disks you want to backup to using the examble on automator.us as a guide
3. Add a second action, which depending on what you want to do could be 'Launch Application', 'Run AppleScript' or 'Run Shell Script' setting the 'Ignore results from previous action' will probably help you.

And that's it! each time your backup volume of choice is mounted on your desktop the script/application will be launched in my case PsyncX is launched and I have to manually press the previously created backup item. I could potentially make a shell script that calls psync directly I prefer to leave it like that.

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