Cloning and USB Booting on Toshiba - What's feasible?

I am looking at buying a Toshiba laptop. I would like to be able to use my HD cloning application (Casper) I have been successfully using on my desktop: regularly cloning my system drive onto an external USB HD. In case of internal HD mecanical failure or system corruption, I simply physically replace the failing internal HD by its clone and off I go. It works very well.

I believe that I should be able to clone a Toshiba laptop internal drive (are they all SATA now?) onto a USB external ATA drive (correct me if I am wrong). But since I won’t be able to fit the clone HD into the laptop in case of failure of the laptop internal HD, I need to know whether I can boot up the laptop from the USB external clone. With Windows runing off the USB drive (is that possible???) I would then start Casper and clone back the external clone onto the laptop internal drive (if still functional) or onto a new laptop drive (if replacement is needed).

So the question is really whether a Toshiba laptop internal (SATA?) HD can be cloned onto an external USB ATA HD and whether a Toshiba laptop can be set to boot (through BIOS setting?) and run Windows (probably Vista) from that USB external clone.

Hope that makes some sense.

 

"Problem" solved on ncix forum.
I just have to use the bootable CD that has the Casper cloning utility and clone back the spare USB HD back onto the laptop HD...