Removing OSX from firewire drive

[DoS]

Hi, I would like some help before I do something I might regret. I separated the whole reason for what I want to do in that quote, or if you would like to help me you can go directly to my question below.

I have a Mac mini, and connected in it I have a 500GB firewire drive from Iomega, from which I run OSX Leopard. The internal 80GB drive is used for some backups. I've been on this configuration for about 4 months.

But now the firewire drive is really driving me nuts because of its noise. It's just so incredibly noisy when the computer is doing ANYTHING at all. Opening any application makes me feel the computer is slow because it looks like it's going to explode of so much disk reading/writing. When I used the Mac mini it was all smooth and silent.

I don't want it anymore, I want to reinstall OSX in the internal drive and use the Iomega for storing my 300GB worth of video files. The problem is that I have nowhere to put 300GB so I could format everything and start my new configuration.

Is it possible to install OSX in my internal drive and remove Iomega's OSX and all it's applications, settings, while leaving my personal files on the firewire drive? Is it as simple as deleting system folders after I installed the new system?

Let me know if I couldn't be clear, thank you for your attention!

 

[Blue Velvet]

What's currently on the internal drive?

To preserve all your account settings — email, everything — it would easiest to clone your OS X install onto there but this 300Gb of stuff that's on your external drive is a nuisance.

Otherwise, you'll need to install OS X on your internal drive first which will erase what's on there, before you can even think about moving stuff over before erasing the current boot drive.

I'm not sure what account/OSX options are new in Leopard, so maybe there's an easier way of resolving the situation you're in.

 

[DoS]

There's absolutely nothing useful on the internal drive, it can be wiped. After that I will have dual boot in 2 different OSXs, right?

I just want to know how I can remove OSX from the external drive after that, so that I won't have dual boot and I won't have system files on the external drive.