[X4U] Installing Leopard from a different machine on a new external HD

[David R. Boag, DDS]

My daughter just killed my external LaCie 500 GB HD because she found  
the power switch on the surge strip and thought it was neat how the  
light flashed on and off when she flipped the switch back and  
forth...while the drive was running.

I still love her.

So I have to replace the drive. It's going to be attached to a Mac  
Mini right now, so for normal use, FW400 or USB 2.0 will be used.  
However, I have a MBP 2.5 GHz 15", and I was thinking that I'll go  
ahead and partition and install OSX on the drive from that machine  
because it will be faster. Could there be potential problems with  
doing that? And will using FW800 make much difference in installation  
time?

Also, I need recommendations for a 500GB external HD. I'd like it to  
have eSATA and FW800 but it's not mission critical right now, but I'll  
just bet in the next couple of years we're gonna see eSATA on Macs.

Any and all advice welcome.

David R. Boag, DDS

P.S. Is there anyone who knows how to install Leopard from disk images  
versus DVDs? The last time I did it I couldn't find a good way to do it.