Booting from a backup drive

Hello, I am getting an external firewire drive tomorrow, and am going to make a bootable backup.
How does one boot from a bootable firewire backup drive?
Thanks

Not all Firewire chipsets are bootable. For example I can't boot either of my PowerPC Macs on the Firewire drive I have with a Prolific 3507 chipset. 
Oxford chipsets are highly recommended.
mrtotes

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