New mac owner , have few question

[dnanian]

Understood. But it's really not possible, at least with SuperDuper!, to back up without a place to store the backup...

A FireWire enclosure will work in general, but some of them won't boot, regardless of the chipset (Oxford is usually the one you want). But there's some firmware difference -- the technical details you'd have to look up -- that allows the actual boot support. I'm sure a search on the 'net will turn up some references.

Hope that helps!