SmartUpdate to Network after Backup to Local
 

I used FireWire to do my first full backup using SuperDuper! in order to get the fastest backup. I then put the same drive on my network. I've read your post about using Sparse Image with SmartUpdate in order to save to a network drive. But I'm running it now and it looks like it's treating it as a new full backup.

My question is this: Will this process result in the same backup scenario as if the drive was still connected by FW, that is bootable from the external disk drive (attached directly to the Mac, of course) in the event of internal HD failure?

Definitely not, no. Images are not "real" drives and thus aren't directly bootable.