How to boot up a mac from an external disk?

After a recent update, my macpro starts and I see the program charging line starting to fill up, but all of a sudden it stops, I hear the hard disks stop rotating and the computer shuts down. Can somebody help me?
Thanks a lot.
Ciro

clone your system so you have bootable backups, and definitely before you make changes to your system.
as to why you use external for booting, you don't say, nor what type drive interface case which may not seem like a reason, or might.
Invest in multiple backup methods like Carbon Copy Cloner along with others.
And by not saying if you run Mountain or Lion or earlier makes it guess work whether you have a recovery partition but generally it would be on the same hard drive and that doesn't help if it is the drive or the interface.
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.bombich.com/software/updates/ccc-3.5.html
OS X Lion Install to Different Drive
How to create an OS X Lion installation disc MacFixIt
Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard
http://www.apple.com/support/lion/installrecovery/
Create an OS X Lion Install disc
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20080989-263/how-to-create-an-os-x-lion-ins tallation-disc
How to clone your system:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120711_2-MacPro-internal-clone-ba ckup.html

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