Mount options for external drive

[Andy Campbell]

Hi,

I have an external eSATA drive, that is connected 90% of the time.  

As its not always attached I can't put in in /etc/fstab - as the OS won't
boot it the device is missing - unless I'm missing some option. 

So I let it get auto mounted, I'm not sure by what mechanism, HAL, 
DeviceKit, gnome-mount or some combination of the above F11 has completely 
confused me.  Plus I seem to need to set filesystem-mount-system-internal 
to get it mount if initially plugged in on boot.

So it all working, except I was looking for ways for setting mount options
i.e noatime, nodiratime.  Is it possible ? Some sort of HAL policy ?

Thanks for any advice
Andy