Can't boot from my External USB since 10.5.6 Update

Hi to everyone and sorry in advance for my english.
Here's my problem:
I have a copy of Mac OS X in my external USB drive, just for emergency. Two days ago I decided to update the OS, so i reboot my iMac and everythings gone in the right way. So the disk had no problems.
I run Software update and I downloaded a 377 MB Update (from 10.5.5 to 10.5.6). The installation was successful and the iMac reboot. After first reboot I had a second reboot and now it happend. My screen is still grey with the apple logo and the black wheel that keep rollin'. The hard disk seems to be freezed.
Someone knows if there's something i can do?? I don't wanna reinstall Mac OS.
Thanks. Andrea.

Restart, holding down the OPTION key until the icons start showing up on the screen. When the spinning gear stops, select the internal HD, and click arrow underneath. That should boot the machine with the internal HD. From there you can run Disk Utility on the USB HD. By the way, your English is fine.

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As I want to upgrade my hard drive in my good ol' MacBook, I wanted to backup my present boot HDD to an external USB drive (freshly formatted, HFS+ journaled, GUID partition table). I tried both SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner. In both cases, the backup/cloning process goes fine, and I can reboot into the external drive, and the OS starts (yes, with wifi working, even iStat menus, textExpander etc. initiating fine). But all applications (not those on the menu bar, though) crash and notify me of some thread having tried some invalid operation, or sometimes I even got some vague reference to kernel protection.
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Per the Community Rules, discussion of passwords is sensitive territory and may risk a thread lock, so please keep that in mind if/as this discussion progresses.
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I have restored my internal system drive (27GB) to a 100GB partition on a 300GB external FW drive (as a backup).
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No start and the only way to get going again was to turn the FW drive off & reboot.
Is it possible to boot from a FW drive?
Should a drive as described be bootable?
Any thoughts will be appreciated.
John

Thank you all for your input.
After some trial & error (& little sleep last night) I have made some progress:
Further research suggested that:
1. there may be a hardware issue with my Ex FW case (it has a Prolific PL-3507 chip)
2. Tiger (10.4.x) behaves differently from Panther (10.3.x) and possibly different versions of Tiger may behave differently
Also I have previously successfully used DU to move my OS from a 30GB to 120GB disk (both internal drives) under 10.3.9. This disk will boot when placed in a ext FW case.
I concluded that under 10.3.9 at least my case was OK & Apple DU was OK when run from the boot volume.
I also checked the clone made using DU under 10.4.3 by taking the HDD out of the FW case & installing it internally in my Mac - it wouldn't boot so DU hadn't made a bootable clone - it was never going to boot internally or externally. Ever.
Next step - SuperDuper! - worked perfectly - backed up & booted no fuss, no worries.
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1st to boot from & run DU from
2nd to be cloned (the vloume to be backed up)
3rd to be colned onto - the backup
I tried DU from the boot disk again to "prove" it wouldn't work. While it appeared to clone correctly Permissions were all messed up & after over an hour of "Repairing Permissions" I gave up. The volume wouldn't boot even though system preferences saw it as a bootable volume.
I then ran DU from another volume (the one made using SuperDuper!). After verification (but not repairing permissions as I didn't want to potentially waste another hour!) it booted fine from the ext FW drive. I did however uncheck "Ignore Ownership" after Cmd-I on the volume from the desktop.
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My hardware is OK (& probably others who may have similar issues)
Apple DU can make a bootable clone which will work on an ext FW drive PROVIDING 3 volumes are used - boot with DU on, from & to. Suitable for a bootable backup but a bit fiddly ( also free & regularly updated by Apple)
SuperDuper does the same job with less fuss (don't need a CD or 3rd volume + other features). As noted by Matthew basic cloning is free but I think the shareware cost will be worthwhile ($US27.95)
SuperDuper! here: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
Thanks to all for their input.
I now have an answer that I'm more than happy with.
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