[techno]

In recent years as my computer skills sharpen I become a bit more into securing my computer. I've created a firmware password for my MacBook and currently use SuperDuper! to back up my system to a password-protected sparse image on an external hard drive. My question is, should my main hard drive fail, how can I boot off my backup? The sparse image needs to be mounted, right? So that would mean I need to already be running an instance of Mac OS X, which I wouldn't be able to do.

In that case, is it feasible to install a copy of Leopard on an external drive, create a password-protected sparse image backup on the same drive so that I can boot off the "clean" installation and then compare the problematic main hard drive with the backup?

All that being asked, I'm also considering enabling FileVault for added security but before I even think about that I want to be sure that I understand every aspect of backing up to and restoring from password-protected sparse images. Thanks!