Permanent mount of Firewire Drive

I use my FW drive from my iMac for time machine off my MBP. It works great as long as someone is logged on the iMac.
The drive is not mounted on the iMac until someone logs on though. It also dismounts it when they logout and change accounts (as kids often do). How do I make this a permanent mount regardless of whether someone is logged in or not and that it stays when people logout and back in?
Thanks,
Keith...

The trick to keeping external drives mounted after a logout lies in a little .plist file. The name of this file is autodiskmount.plist, and it does not exist by default; you have to make it. In the file should be the following text:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
Put this file in:
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
And reboot. (Yes, reboot.)
Now all external drives (firewire, USB, eSATA, etc.) will stay mounted after a logout. If they're shared, they'll always be available. And they'll always be available to Time Machine.
Source: http://systemsboy.blogspot.com/2008/04/time-machine-after-logout.html

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