Can I boot my ibook from an external drive?

[xithejuryx]

My iBook hard drive suddenly refused to boot up in Fall of '07. There was (and, to some extent, still is) some data I hadn't had the chance to back up, so rather than wiping it clean and/or getting a new one from apple, I just put it in a crate and set it aside until I had time to deal with it.

Flash forward to last week, when I used target mode to rescue about a quarter of the unsaved data. Out of every 15 or 20 times I throw it into target mode, my Macbook Pro recognizes it maybe once or twice, and then freezes up about 5 minutes in.

I've used the install disk to attempt repairing the drive, but even when I get a "successful repair", boot-up still never goes past the grey apple screen (sans wheel), even though disk utility recognizes it as "bootable" and lets me view all of the contents.

My question, then, is - is it possible to install OSX on an external drive and boot from that? If so, how do I do it without first creating a disk image of the drive (disk utility won't allow me to save it to the external)?

Thanks a million.

[Giaguara]

If you can get OS X installed on the external drive, you can boot from it. As long as it's a firewire drive.

[fryke]

Start from the system installation disk by holding down the "c" key and select the external drive for installation when asked about the destination.