A Firewire External Drive to use as Bootable drive?

Question

Hello fellow Apple enthusiasts,
1.1 I was hoping one of you might care to suggest how would I go about using my Firewire (FW) drive as a bootable drive?(I believe during restart I press the "T" key to initialize this process)
It is a 120 GB drive that I have partitioned into 2 parts a 30 GB which has my apps, etc, and an 80 GB section with work files.
1.2 Should I just use an app like Super Duper to clone my G3 and iBook HD's? (hmmm maybe just one of them) But that would limit my ability to use the FW for all and any HD's
1.3 I do have a bona-fide edition of Tech Tool 4, should I make an "eDrive" on the FW to reboot from? or install Tech tool on the FW as an app itself?
1.4 Or possibly one of you may know of a better suggestion to make a part of the Firewire drive a drive that can rescue other Macs, namely my own

Answer 1

1.1 I don't think 'T' is what you're after - that will boot your computer as an external FW drive.
Given a bootable FW drive, you can either (1) choose it as your Startup Disk in System Preferences, or (2) hold down the Option key while restarting/booting and choose the drive from the options displayed. I believe that (1) is recommended but there might be situations where (2) is the only option.
1.2 I'm not sure what you mean by "limit my ability to use the FW for all and any HD's". Do you want to use the drive to backup all your computers?
It is perfectly possible to clone a HD to a partition of an external FW drive. To do this, you can partition the FW drive in Disk Utility making sure that the partitions you plan to clone to are big enough, of course. Doing this will erase any data on the FW drive, however, so be sure to back it up. Some people also recommend writing zeros over the disk before proceeding. Again, Disk Utility has options to do this. When you partition, make sure that you choose the same type of file system as you're using on your macs.
I've never used Super Duper, but Carbon Copy Cloner will certainly let you create a bootable clone a HD on a partition of the FW drive. I use it for this purpose and have happily booted from the clones when necessary. If you consider CCC, be sure to read the documentation - especially "B4 U Clone" - so that you prepare the external drive correctly and take the steps you need to to ensure a successful cloning operation. For details see http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html. Note that the latest version is only for 10.4/10.5, but the earlier version is suitable for 10.2/10.3. I believe the latest version does a very good cloning job. The earlier version does not copy all the extended attributes etc. that you may care about. On the other hand, I have certainly restored successfully from clones made using the earlier version.
Super Duper has an excellent reputation and is supposed to copy extended attributes etc. nearly flawlessly. I can't speak from experience in this case, though, and I don't know how flexible it is in terms of allowing clones to partitions etc. as I've never used it.
1.3 Sorry, can't answer this - I don't know what you're referring to.
1.4 Only that if Super Duper can't do what you want, CCC probably can. Whichever you use, be sure to read and follow the instructions and to test the clone by booting and working from it to assure yourself that it really is satisfactory.
Good luck.
- cfr