[mdlug] External Hard Drive as Backup

[Peter Bart]

Hello All,
    I've decided to at least get an inexpensive hard drive for around
$150-$200 that holds at least 500gig to be used to sync two notebooks
too. I almost bought an external  Buffalo drive with usb and firewire.
Then I saw a review that claimed the drive itself was simply a
repackaged Western Digital. I don't really want one of those. Am I down
to buying a sata drive and an enclosure? Does firewire offer higher
speeds than usb or can I open my options a little by dispensing with
firewire? Should I consider paying a little more and getting a NAS with
ethernet? 
    Once I get one, how should I format it so I would be able to sync
two notebooks with /root, /boot, /usr, /swap, /var, /tmp, /opt
and /home partitions. Just two ext3 partitions, one for each notebook?
Or must I replicate my partitioning scheme twice over on the 'backup'
drive? It would also be nice to be able to boot directly from the
'backup' drive via usb or other, must I do something special for that to
happen?

Best Regards,
-- 
Peter The Plumber sm on the Road