bootable backup plus extra files on ext. drive?

[Blank Frank]

Hi guys,

First off, nice forum folks! Here's a newbie question for y'all.

I have had a Intel Macbook 120 gb for over a half year now (first mac for me and I'm very, very happy, thank you very much) and am now planning to buy a LaCie D2 Quadra 500 gb external drive. I've done a few days' reading on the net and have come to the conclusion that I'll probably be buying SD as well. Having never had an external "backup" disk before, there is something I would like clearing up.

I would like to create a bootable backup of everything on my Macbook on the external drive. But on the same drive I would also like to store extra documents, audio & video files, etc. that I do not want on my Macbook but want to have access to from time to time.

So in a nutshell, I want to be able to restore my Macbook's state should it (God forbid) ever crash plus keep those ever growing collection of files I don't need on a daily basis on the Macbook in one place for safekeeping.

Could anyone think of any issues this might cause? Would I need to partition my external drive in two to make this work, or not?

Thanks in advance folks,
Blank Frank