Can I make an external Hard Drive my boot drive

My internal hard drive is about to die, it is making strange grunging noises and the computer is taking up to 30 minutes to boot up. The internal disk is the original 10GB disk with 9.7GB on it.
I constantly get boot disk nearly full warnings. So I bought a Western Digital My Book 2, Home Edition 500GB Firewire Drive. I connected it up and it appeared on my desktop. Being a bit of a div, I tried to drag my old hard disk onto the new one but that failed (obviously). I now need to get everything off my old hard disk and onto my new firewire disk and then make sure that the computer boots up from that one. How can I achieve this, should I install the OS (OS X 10.4.11) on the new disk and then copy over the files, and applications? Or would it be better to "find a way of cloning my drive onto the new disk.
More questions...do I need to make partitions on the new disk (I don't know what these are I'm afraid)
When I have set up the new drive as a boot disk, can I just unplug the old internel disk?
Grateful thanks to anyone who can assist thiscomputer illiterate technophobe.
Allen

Is it dangerous to use an external HD to boot from? The guy at Circuit City told me it was.
One danger of using an external hard drive as a boot drive, is the connection is not as reliable as an internal hard drive. The other is the mistaken assumption that just because it is separate, or not part of the computer, that it is safe. The only true safety comes in numbers. You should always backup your data*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
2.5" hard drives are a little less reliable than 3.5" hard drives because of the smaller parts involved. Mac Minis have 2.5" hard drives, whereas other desktop Macs have 3.5" hard drives. Whether the reliability of Firewire or USB over SATA or Parallel ATA on 2.5" is enough to offset this difference is hard to say. Having enough backups ensures you don't have to be surprised when you find out in your situation.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

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wolkerbw wrote:
And how can you clone the internal......and then boot it from the external
what does SSD mean???
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Regards
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Mac Gamer wrote:
Can I remove the external hard drive after using Time Machine to back up my information?
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I am going to use Boot Camp but I want to be sure my memory has been properly backed up.
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Message was edited by: joell109

Has using information on 'resolving kernel panics' helped to
define or troubleshoot the list of potential causes of these;
or has the process been partly a guess?
resolving kernel panics - troubleshooting the issue:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html
Poor or under-qualification RAM, failed or unable to work
in a later system than a computer was first shipped with,
can lead to kernel panic issues. So can a combination of
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{And the logic board or hardware data flow controller (ATA)
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Holler if you need specifics on how to do each. This was just an executive summary.

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Can i connect a external hard drive to apple tv 3 generation, for see my movies itunes with out use streaming or icloud?

can i connect a external hard drive to apple tv 3 generation, for see my movies itunes with out use streaming or icloud? in apple tv 3 and 2?
That i want to know is i can connect a external hard drive to apple tv, for see my movies that i keep in my external hard drive, i dont want to see then whit the streaming and icloud, or used my laptop o pc for access de movies and stuff.
i put iny spanish to, because i feel my english is not so good, but i hope you understand me.
if i can´t connect a external hard drive, wich others media players divices you know that can see itunes movies?
¿quisiera saber si se puede conectar una memoria externa al apple tv, para ver el contenido de itunes que tengo guardado en esa memoria como peliculas, ect?
lo que no quiero es usar la icloud, o el servicio streamig para ver mi contenido, ni tener que usar la computadora para ver mi contenido el la tv?
y de no poderse conectar que otros dispositivos media pleyer conoces para ver peliculas de itunes en la tv?

Welcome to the Apple Community.
can i connect a external hard drive to apple tv 3 generation
Unfortunately not.

Can I make an external Hard Drive my boot drive

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