Any way to keep external HD items in sidebar permanently? (10.4)

[iPenguin]

One of my major annoyances when upgrading to 10.4 is the way that it now handles items located on my external hard drive that I put in the Finder's sidebar. Previously, in 10.3, when the drive was ejected, any of it's items that were in the sidebar would turn into generic folder icons, which wasn't all that nice, but at least they stayed put. Now whenever I eject the drive, all the icons in the sidebar disappear, and every time I plug the drive back in I have to manually add the items back to the sidebar. I tried looking to either Automator or Applescript to try to automate the process of adding the items, but since I'm not much of scripter, I was unable to achieve success.

Does anyone know if there is either a way to: a.)Automate the adding of certain items to the sidebar every time the external volume mounts, or b.)Make the items stay put in the sidebar even when the external drive is ejected?

Thanks for any help!
-iPenguin