HT1310 I press option when starting up my computer and it just hangs or at least never gives me the list of startup disks before it's booted up.

I press option when starting up my computer and it just hangs or at least never gives me the list of startup disks before it's booted up. I can choose which startup up disk when I'm already booted up from settings --> Startup Disk but how do I know if my Macintosh HD internal drive disk fails I'll be able to boot from my supposedly bootable backup drive?
What am I missing? I have the latest Mountain Lion, could this be bug in that new Op System?
Does the startup drive list (before bootup) only show up if the Macintosh HD is not bootable (crashed or broken)?
    Dave

Replugging my keyboard into my front USB2 slot was half the solution. I had my keyboard plugged into a KVM switch which goes into the back. The other half was that I needed to unplug my backup firewire hard drive from the front port to a chained drive with the source hooked into the back of the Mac Pro. Not sure if it was the cable or the firewire slot that gummed up the hardware startup hard drive selection diaglog.
I also tried resetting the NVRAM and only got one Mac startup sound. That didn't seem to do it but then again it could of been a necessary condition as well.
Thanks everyone for your help.
   Dave

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