Installing lion on to Extern usb drive.

   Hi folks,
I have a issue installing lion on a Seagate Momentus XT 500gb on my macbook pro5.4 2.53ghz mid 2009.
I have no problem identifying the harddrive in the usb drive. Or for that matter formating it.
When Entering appstore and downloading and then installing it on to the the new hardrive, it runs smooth and all. After the installation is complete the computer reboots and enters the new freshly installed lion installation.
I poke around in it and it seems to function well.
What happens next is very strange!  IF i reboot or shutdown the computer and remove the drive from the usb dock and install it inside the computer the Computer can not find the drive. The "apple" logo that turns on when booting turns to a folder with a "?" question mark on it and a "denied" sign (circle with a dash over it) starts flashing.
My Computer cant find the newly installed OS.
if i press the option key during boot it can se what ever i name the drive to for isntance "Machintosh HD 2" and the recovery hd partition.
But cannot boot from any of em.
I can put the old drive in the usb dock and boot from it.
How do i go from here? Any help would be very much appriciated.

2 choices:
Download Lion and elect your external drive as the destination (formatted for a Mac)
Clone your internal to your external and then install Lion on the external, this has the advantage of allowing you to test your installation without committing it to your internal drive

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