Installing and booting Mac OS X on an external HD

Ok I know this is probably pretty simple, but I wanted to make sure I do it right...

I have a Macbook Pro. I want to be able to install Mac OS X to an external hard drive and then be able to boot from it sometimes (but keep my standard internal HD installation to fall back on when I want it).

I do have iPartition because I read a while back it was a good way to get started. Is there a simple guide or tutorial I can use, or can someone post instructions?

Thanks!

 

Thanks for the tip. I actually want to use another version of OSX, not the exact same one I have on my primary hard drive. Sorry if I didn't specify that

 

Hah - I should have figured it was that easy, it's a Mac

Thanks for the advice!

 

Well I did it and it did install but took over 4 hours via a USB external HD.

I do have a Firewire 800 drive I can use. It has info I CANNOT lose on it though, so I would have to partition it. Wouldn't that still take quite a while though, and won't I lose all the info on it?

Can I partition my main MBP hard drive and install it on there? Or is that just asking for trouble?

Thanks!

 

spinee1 - Yeah it looks like there was an issue with that drive. I changed external HDs and this one looks like it will take less than an hour to install.

Incidentally, I read a tip from another site that mentioned you could partition the primary HD using the BootCamp install helper. I did try to do that, but I kept getting an error that I couldn't install bootcamp (said something like some files could not be moved so it couldn't continue). I have a feeling had that worked that I could have just gone that route to get this installed.

Right before that, I got another error on my HD about an error that needed to be fixed by rebooting.

Anyways, long story short, I think I got it working now. Thanks for the help everyone!