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It is useful to check manufacturers web sites before buying, as they frequently discuss the bootability of the firewire drive for Macintoshes.
[In fact, sometimes the companies even bundle a backup program with their drives, but the included version is a "lite" one that will not create a bootable clone, and if you order the upgrade from them to "full" version it will create a bootable clone. That is indicative of a drive that is bootable with the right software (like SuperDuper).]
I have multiple Seagate External USB 2.0/Firewire 400 drives, all are bootable. I also have multiple Maxtor One-Touch external USB 2.0/Firewire 400 drives, all again bootable. And I have one Firelite CMS drive with firewire 400, also bootable.
Making up a list of "good drives" would be too long to maintain -- I think virtually every *modern* firewire drive should boot a Mac. Keeping a list of torublesome drives might be a lot smaller and would make more sense. An old drive or one from an odd manufacturer would be suspect.
Besides sticking with the big companies like Iomega, Maxtor, Seagate, Lacie, CMS, another approach is to check with Mac stores that sell certain brands -- the salepeople will tell you if they boot Macs (they probably all do). Also, check Mac-oriented web sites like MacConnection that sell Mac-oriented hardware. And finally, MacAddict and MacWorld have recently reviewed external hard drives ... another good source, as bootability was discussed in those articles as I recall.
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