Can I boot my computer from an external hard drive

I have already used the (internal) hard drive to boot my computer. If it is bootable while outside the computer, that is only the (internal) hard drive being outside the computer running while the computer is on then I will buy an external herd drive enclosure so that it can do so.
I want to boot my computer using one of my internal hard drives using an external hard drive enclosure so that I do not wear out the the hard drive ports
I am running a Late 2008 MacBook unibody with Mac OS X (10.6.8). The hard drive I plan to boot from has been used internally and is an ssd hard drive, I formated it before I started using it.

... that part is for using an internal hard drive and as I stated that is the one I am trying to avoid wearing by daily swapping. Not only is it an inconvenience to swap them, but it is not an activity that is usually expected to be performed by most users, so likely this part is not meant to be used for that and that would make it not built for multiple hard drives swaps making it prematurely wear out.
That is exactly correct. We do not do that.
It is not necessary to get inside your computer to connect a hard drive. You can connect a second (or third, or even more) drive externally. And if the drive is correctly formatted, you can boot from it. An external hard drive enclosure costs less than < $10. You install the drive in the enclosure, and you can connect it externally to a usb port on the computer.
A typical enclosure for a SATA laptop drive looks like this:
http://www.amazon.com/SATA-Hard-Drive-Case-Enclosure/dp/B001AAVA08
In summary then, keep one drive inside the computer. Always. Use any other drives you need as externals. If you have many external usb devices, plug them into a powered hub. This way nothing needs to be regularly connected and disconnected.

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