I can't start up from snow leopard disk anymore

Ever since i upgraded to Lion, i haven't been able to start up my Snow Leopard back up drive via USB anymore?
does anyone have any ideas why this is not possible, I select stratup disk in the system preferences, but when i restart
it just boots up to the iMac drive.
thanks

HI
thanks for your reply an suggestions .i think i need to be more clear:)
1. I recently bought a new iMac i7 which was preloaded with Snow Leopard
2. I Upgraded to Lion - without doing a CCC backup of the system (wish i did now!)  - the only backup i have is on an External WD 2TB as a time machine back up.
3. My previous HD on my MBP 13" was duplicated to my WD 1TB portable Back up Drive using CCC
     - i was previously able to boot up from this USB HD on my iMac under snow leopard, after Lion upgrade i was unable to do so.
What i want Is simply to
1. get another copy of LION INSTALLER, and
2. install a virtual LION Disk on my Mac then do a migration from the USB Backup of my Old system and files to the Virtual Lion Disk, so i can access all my old files on my new iMac.
Don't have time to make so many backups (I think i have too many backups of my system drives right now (probably over 5 backups from all the previous reinstalls and changing macbooks to find out what the problem was - these are all on external drives - mostly firewire). . I think I'll just have to wait it out for the Lion Update and hope that i'll be able to restart from the USB - or go to a mac shop and try to boot up from the USB.

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