backing up an active system drive

[~ j ~]

helo dnanian, thanks for all the help

backed up my ibook internal 30G drive to my external lacie 80G drive.
i booted up from the lacie 80G and all looks well. im using the clone as i type this - fantastic!

so - i have 4 drives i need to make backups of ... 2 of these 4 drives need to be bootable (my G5 system drive & my ibooks internal)

ok i have just a few other Q's

1* i guess i could PARTITION my 400G seagate firewire drive into say ... 4 partitions ... and make backups directly onto this drive?
this will prevent superduper from erasing the other backups whilst in the process of making one?

2* do i need the same free space on my destination drive, as is the entire size of the drive i am backing up?
or just enough for files on it to be backed up?

3* is there an advantage for me to use disk images?
4* will they save any space?
5* is a disk image directly bootable, if so, are they as reliable as the normal 'backup'?

i have read the manual several times, but some of it seems to be going in one ear and out the other!
i think ive read too many manuals lately!

x