Starting up from firewire hard drive

Riddle me this...
I just had to drop my macbook off for potentially week long service at the apple store. I cloned my drive on a firewire external hard drive before I did. I was hoping to be able to work off this drive while my laptop is being repaired. I have a G4 Power PC dual 800MHz running OS10.4.3. The hard drive I'm trying to use is powered through the firewire. I think my computer hasn't powered up the firewire in time to start up from the firewire disk. I need options...ideas. PLEASE HELP.

Hi Jennifer,
If this drive has a One Button Touch feature you're up a creek, besides Bus Powered drives being the worst invention since USB Bus Powered drives.;;)
What brand/model is it?
For instance...
The following external hard drives are bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b):
• WD My Book Premium Edition
• WD My Book Pro Edition
The following external hard drives are not bootable on Power PC based Macintosh computers systems through USB/FireWire 1394(a/b):
• My Book Essential Edition
• My Book Essential Edition 2.0
• My Book Home Edition
• My Book Mirror Edition
• My Book Office Edition
• My Book Premium Edition II
• My Book Pro Edition II
• My Book Studio Edition
• My Book Studio Edition II
• My Passport Studio
• My Passport Elite
• My Passport Essential
• WD Passport
• WD Passport (Silver)
But have you tried holding the Option/alt key down at bootup to see what Boot choices you have?

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http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661
Firewire symbol:

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