Question about formatting external HD
 

I am going to use SD to make on a weekly basis a bootable clone of my intel Macbook running Leopard with VMWare fusion installed running XP but NOT in a separate boot camp partition. Should I format the drive with GUID partition map and OS extended journaled for my SD volume? I assume this will allow my XP portion to be backed up.

Yes, you should. And yes - but make sure VMware is not running when you back up.