Lightroom can't find external disk by itself

Since uprgrading to Lightroom 2 (currently 2.2) I'm having this strange problem (this is on a Macbook Pro (OSX 10.5.6).
I keep my photo's and my catalog on an external SATAlink harddrive. Often when I start Lightroom, it tells me that it can't find my catalog and gives me the option to manually browse for it. When I select my external drive, I notice that somehow there's been added a number to my external drive's name (the current name that LR uses is 'external disk 8', where the disks real name is just 'external disk'. The pattern is such that when I'll open LR tomorrow, LR will probably not be able to find my catalogue, and when I browse for it, I'll find that LR (or my OS?) has renamed my external disk to 'external disk 9'.
Also, LR hasn't been able to locate my catalogue backup folder (which is also on the external drive). I have to manually direct LR to the backup folder each time. I guess this is the same problem.
If anybody has a clue what the problem could be, I'd very much like to hear it. It's not a huge problem to browse for the external disk when LR starts, but it's anoying nevertheless...
Richard

Richard-
Delete your Prefs file, always make sure your external is mounted before launching LR, then launch by double clicking on the proper .lrcat file. I'd frankly change the name of my external. as anything that even looks like a default name is a no-no in my book.

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