Boot from an external HD

Hi, I am considering buying a 200 GB Lacie external hard drive for my Power Mac G5. My question is what and how would I go about booting from the external HD? Can I install OSX from the dvds I got with my G5, or would I need to buy the software. Thanks in advance

stabbin

to do this, insert install disc 1, boot from it, the external should show up in the list as a mounted drive, install onto there, now its bootable, or use carbon copycloner to back up your entire os onto it and its bootable as well.

you can hold down the option button on startup, and it will show all bootable volumes.

once you install OS X on the external drive, you can choose to start up from it in your Sytem Preferences >> Startup Disk