How to format an external drive for boot and backup?

[2178965]

Hello all,
I just bought a new iomega external drive that I would like to format to be a bootable backup drive. (I'm not sure if I'll use rsync or TimeMachine yet for doing the actual backups).

Should I format it using DiskUtility or TimeMachine? Will TimeMachine create a bootable backup?

Thanks much in advance....

 

[Caleb531]

Time Machine does not support bootable backups. For that, use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.

 

[FourCandles]

Caleb531 is correct.

If you go for CCC, see this support document for a guide to formatting a drive.

 

[2178965]

Thank you both for your replies. I've downloaded CCC and I'm currently backing up my hard disk.