FreeBSD USB disks - booting and backups

[Patrick Baldwin]

I'm thinking of backing up my FreeBSD 6.2 webmail server by installing
FreeBSD onto the USB, and then dumping the whole filesystem onto the 
USB.  That way, in the event of a drive failure, I can boot off the
USB drive, and then just restore everything onto the webmail server.

Has anyone else done this?  I haven't found any mention via Google,
which has me concerned that there might be a good reason no one's
done this that I haven't thought of.    One issue I ran into
thus far has been the 500 GB Western Digital MyBook USB drive
I tried first makes my system crash when I plug it in.  I can get
another USB drive and repurpose the one I've got right now, but
before I put any more resources into this idea, I thought I'd
bounce it off some experts.

Any suggestions, links, etc. welcomed.  Particularly for large
capacity USB drives that won't crash my system.

Regards,


-- 
Patrick Baldwin
Systems Administrator
Studsvik Scandpower, Inc.
1087 Beacon St.
Newton, MA 02459
1-617-965-7455