GUIDed or not and USB2 or 3 OK?

[ignoramus]

Thanks Dave,

Who wudda guessed — sure’nuf Disk Utility shows, when selecting the Disk, rather than the Volume: “Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table”
The HDD is an Hitachin500GB SATA HDP725050, which I will erase, reformat and try to and use to make another copy of this OS X 10.5.6, befor updating to 10.5.9, and repeating. Then, after testing, I’ll put it into cold storage. I’ve frankly had it with these slow green drives, and glued shut cases. Better to go with WD Blacks for my own work, and at least 7200rpms for storage and backups.
Any docking stqtion recommendations?

The new Startup Disk will have 10.8 or 10.9, and will have cleanly installed and updated applications on it.

You are indeed correct - the Doc does say “USB drives cannot be used as a startup drive for PowerPC based Macintoshes“ So that’s out of the way.

Todd