MBP: boot to Windows 7 from external drive?

MBP: booting to Windows 7 from an external drive? Is this poss?
Further, is it possible with a 1TB external drive to partition it to two 500MB volumes, and have one (a) with a bootable clone of the OSX, and the other (b) with 64 bit Windows 7?
I would keep (a) ready in case of a HD failure on my MBP, and use (b) for a couple of PC progs I have that I don't want to go to the trouble of buying the Mac version. They run fine on a PC.
Also would be good for checking cross-platform compatibility of websites.
Would these work with eSata connections (Time Machine doesn't)? or else I'll go FW800.
Cheers!

No, as mentioned 10's of dozens of times, Windows won't.
OS X has always allowed booting from Firewire, and now USB (but that is slow).
Casper 6 will backup Windows to another drive, as will Windows Home Server to external devices.
Many programs can be run through a VM like VirtualBox, Paralells, Fusion.
SuperDuper is just one of the more popular programs to backup (clone) OS X and have it bootable.
Never rely on just one backup set or drive.
If you can go with eSATA (ExpressCard) that is faster but FW800 would be okay and be bootable, eSATA probably not.
Check http://www.macsales.com/firewire for both

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