Can you help a novice format an external hard drive?

Greetings.
I'm not very tech literate, so I hope you can help walk me through the following.
I have an external 250 GB firewire drive for back up, and I'd like to format and partition it as a bootable drive and also to back up my 2 internal 40 and 20 GB drives. I don't know how to do this. for example, I don't know whether to format the disk as OS Extended or OS Extended (Journalled). Also, when I backed up using Super Duper, I selected the "make this a bootable disk" option, but couldn't boot from it (It's currently a "Mac OS Extended" disk).
Also, when I have Disk Utility opened, why do I see 2 icons for the same disk? For example, my main drive says" 37.3 GB ST 340014 A", and an indented icon says "OS X" (which is what I named the drive). I know that Disk Utility can or cannot perform certain of its functions depending on which icon I select.
I know this is basi stuff for you...but not for me.
Thanks.
G4 Dual 450 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1GB RAM

Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, if supported.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size.
You can clone your system to the external drive as follows:
How to Clone Using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Select the destination drive on the Desktop and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info window. At the bottom in the Ownership and Permissions section be sure the box labeled "Ignore Permissions on this Volume" is unchecked. Set Ownership and Permissions as follows: Owner=system with read/write; Group=admin with read/write; Other with read-only.
2. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
3. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list.
4. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
5. Select the backup or destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
6. Select the startup or source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
7. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
For added precaution you can boot into safe mode before doing the clone.

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Can you help a novice format an external hard drive?

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