Backup to external HD and clean reinstall of imac g5

Hi, I recently purchased an Iomega Ultramax 500gb external HD with the intention of moving my iphoto library to free up the space on my imac which only has an 80gb hard drive. The short story is that disaster struck and the iomega failed resulting in a lengthy recovery process using Data Recovery II. I now have my photos backed up to cd & dvd and Apple have replaced my Iomega.
My intention is now to use the new Iomega to create a complete backup/clone of my imac hd and then do a clean system reinstall of the imac.
Do I need to partition the new iomega?
If so is there an idiots guide to do this?
Once complete can I use the iomega as the host drive for my new iphoto library?
Are there any problems with this idea?
I am seriously considering buying a new model imac with a much bigger hd with Aperture and iphoto, will I be able to access and use files from the backup and transfer to new imac. As you might imagine my recent experience has left a fear factor, all I want is to get back to a simple and safe system.

Hi Tinbum,
any luck on a response?
I also want to completely restore / clean my new iMac but need to backup all the data to an external drive for 2 reasons. 1 to create an external bootable HD and for regular "time capsule" like regular backups once all setup.
problems are;
1. is there a way to setup an external HD on my router ethernet port to be recognized by the Mac
2. is there software to do regular backups. Time Capsule doesnt seem mature enough at this stage.
Cheers

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macfan110 wrote:
When I currently go into Time machine the restore button is alwats greyed out.
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SO - I had to do a clean reinstall of the Snow Leopard OS
Not really.
Snow Leopard can be reinstalled over the exisitng system without losing any user data.
now I want to run iTunes while maintaining the playlists and playcounts and all that other stuff that I had before - while also retaining all of my apps and movies and downloads, etc.
Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external
That is all you need to do.
Make sure the exterrnal is powered on, mounted on the desktop and ready before launching iTunes.
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Nothing should get "reloaded" as it is simply the same iTunes library as before. Simply opening a library doesn't load anything new.

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no.

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Trying to plan in advance...
I was wondering if I can (with a laptop) use Time Machine for both:
1. Creating Time Machine backups on a partiion of an external drive. My plan was going to create 2 partitions: one to be used for Time Machine backups of another external hard drive (that holds all of my media) and then the other partition was going to be a bootable clone of my internal drive (totally separate from Time Machine)
and
2. Also use Time Machine for my Time Capsule, to create Time Machine backups of my internal drive.
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Backup to external HD and clean reinstall of imac g5

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