Problems booting from external firewire drive

Here's a weird one...
I'm trying to help a buddy with a 3rd gen MBP and a new WD 'My Studio' firewire external drive.
He can mount and use the drive but is unable to boot from it. When starting up his machine with option, the drive doesn't show up as selection. The really odd part is the drive does work if plugged in with the USB cable!
The drive in question DOES work as expected on my 5th gen MBP with firewire. Further, I can stert my MBP in target disc mode and it will function as expected as a bootable external drive for his machine. The system in question was cloned with Carbon Copy Cloner. And again, it boots from my MBP.
I've tried different sets of cables (even though everything works on my system). I actually had him send the drive back for warranty replacement but of course the new one behaves the same way.
What could be the cause of apparently certain firewire drives not being bootable (but otherwise working) on a 3rd gen MBP? The intended workflow is to be studio/audio work so using the USB connection for a workaround would not be an option.
Any clues? Windows is not even installed on any of these machines!

baltwo wrote:
FWIW, many WD HDs won't boot Macs and booting Macs isn't supported. Details at their site. That's the main reason I never recommend their crappy HDs.
Actually I'm very familiar with that list- spent a lot of time looking at this past week! 
Ironically, the majority of that page is a list of drives which they claim WILL boot Macs.  In fact, the list is entitled "List of Mac-bootable WD external drives..."
And yep, mine is on there...on the list that reads "The following external hard drives should be bootable on Intel-based Mac computers systems through FireWire (1394a/b)" is "MyBook Studio" as well as my drive model number.
But that's all beside the point.   Like you, I couldn't recommend their drives at this point.   At least make sure if you buy one that the vendor has a good return policy.
Dave

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