Multiple Macs: Disk Images or Clones

Greetings,
I have a MBP that is my main machine. The wife has an iMac with an older OS.
I also just bought a Seagate FreeAgent Go for Mac (320G), and want to create backups of both machines on this external HD. Reading around, I know I can create disk images of the hard drives for each computer and store them on the external HD (there is enough room), and I believe the other sensible alternative is to partition the external HD (into 2) and clone one machine on each partition (thinking of using Carbon Copy Cloner). For this latter option (cloning each machines' drive), I believe I need separate drives (or partitions) to do that (i.e. can't clone the internal HD's from each machine onto one external HD volume) (?).
If I have those options correct (disabuse me as needed). Recommendations on which strategy might be best?
This will be for complete backups done once a month or so.
Message was edited by: bikeprofessor

Thanks much all...
Kiraly...now we are getting down to the nub of it...if I work with disk images, I need a functioning hard drive with space to load the back-up disk image onto and work from.
I think Carbon Copy Cloner is misusing the term bootable disk image on their website:
"Carbon Copy Cloner 3 leverages disk images to provide you the flexibility of storing several complete, bootable* backups on a single shared external hard drive. (* Disk images themselves are not bootable, but you can mount them and restore their content to a physical hard drive to produce a bootable, exact replica of the original)."
http://help.bombich.com/faqs/dmg-and-remote/dimages
comments???

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