boot CD into external firewire harddisk on laptop

On a laptop with a different operating system, is it possible to use a
BOOT CD ROM to get the laptop into using an external firewire attached
harddisk?

I would like the small capacity laptop harddisk to be free from XP
system files as much as possible, since I need to repartition it from
time to time to test applications.

My desired configuration would mean putting system and program files
(e.g. XP updates, drivers, hibernate file, pagefile, windows common
files, etc on the external firewire harddisk only. And the CD ROM to
have boot loader,
?boot.ini, filesystem driver, firewire driver, and other static
information.

Can this be done? If so then my laptop can be freed to host other
operating systems such as Linux, VMWARE, etc.

Thanks in advance for useful comments and tips to relevant articles
and internet links.

David
19July 2003


My laptop has no explicit bios support for firewire interface, however
I can access the firewire disk once I am into windows.