10.5.6 pgrade: plan to try it on an external FW drive.  Please comment

I have a Macbook Pro 17", 2.4 GHz, 4 Gb RAM, 320 Gb HD with Mac OS X 10.5.5 installed. It runs perfectly - no problems of any kind.
I have been monitoring several discussions about 10.5.6 upgrade, including:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/leopard/topic4834.html
To be honest, this is the first time I am concerned about installing a major software update from Apple.
After some consideration, I decided to install 10.5.6 on an external HD first:
- Clone my current HD using Data Backup 3 to an external 320 Gb drive running in a FireWire enclosure
- Boot from an external drive (hold Option key after restart)
- Run Repair Permissions
- Install 10.5.6 Combo update
- Run Repair Permissions
Then, I plan to try all applications while Mac OS X 10.5.6 is running from an external drive.
Questions:
- Did anyone try this approach? Any comments?
- From what I understand, 10.5.6 also updates Mac firmware. Can someone confirm if this is indeed the case?
- If Mac firmware is also updated, then even if I return to 10.5.5 (using the original HD), my Mac will not have the same configuration. This is such a concern.
- Is there any way to backup existing firmware configuration and later restore it?
Thanks, everyone!
Leon

I updated my MacPro using the approach you outlined.
My boot volum is only 40GB, so it did not take much time. What I experienced is that the combo update did not hang when I installed it on the FW drive and afterwards booted from, selecting it as the startup disk in system preferences.
So yes, I definetly would upgrade that way.
As far as the firmware is concerned, I cannot suggest anything, because I did it on a MacPro. There seems to be no changes in firmware.
Patrick

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