Can a bootable clone made from one Mac be used to boot up a different Mac? The clone is from my 2-year-old iMac running latest Snow Leopard and the other system would be a ~1-year-old MacBook that is probably still running Leopard. The external drive is 800/400/USB combo so connectivity wouldn’t be an issue. The iMac is backed up online and to a Time Machine drive as well, so risk to the data on the clone isn’t a big issue.

So nobody has any information about this?

Or is it a stupid question?

You should be able to, yes.

So the hour of my need for this has arrived, and it does indeed work. I’m posting from a MacBook Pro booted from an external drive clone of my iMac internal drive. I haven’t noticed any glitches in the system at all.

I’m a bit late to the game but generally these sorts of switches do work just fine…
- An up-to-date Intel 10.4.11 or PowerPC 10.4.11 system should boot any machine of the same architecture that supports 10.4
- An up-to-date 10.5.8 system should work on any Intel or PowerPC machine that supports 10.5
- An up-to-date 10.6.3 system should boot any Intel Mac, period

It will not work if…
- The machine doesn’t meet the system requirements of the system you’re trying to boot (ie. a G3 trying to boot 10.5) or…
- The machine shipped with a newer system than the one you’re trying to boot (ie. a brand new MacBook trying to boot 10.4.)