MacBook Won't Book from External FW Drive

A 2008 MacBook connected to a known good bootable Firewire HDD [Mac OS 10.6.8; 10.7.5] (I have several drives each can boot two other Macs) will not boot the MacBook. I can put the MB into Target Disk mode and boot either of the other Macs from it. When one or the other of the Macs are put into Target Disk mode the MacBook will not boot up from that TD disk (they all have compatible OS,s, BTW). The MB can read and write from/to any FW connected drive I have tried. I have tried several different FW cables, no difference. Resetting PRAM, no difference Any ideas? What else can I do to troubleshoot this issue? Could the fact that the MB at one time belonged to a grammar school system be a reason, like for security maybe, maybe they tinkered with the firmware? Anyway, that's my question. Thanks for your replies.

can not reinstall the operating system because it does not recognized the hard drive ., i booted the same hard drive from an external usb cable and it booted the system fine , i also exchange the internal with another hard drive and again it did not recognized the hard drive, both hard drives booted up fine externally.
i feel as though it is the internal hard drive internal .

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Ian Patterson wrote:
golferx,
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Message was edited by: stewiesno1

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I have MacBook Pro(late 2011) with OS X 10.7.5 and external hard drive with Ubuntu 13.04, from wich i can boot succefully on my PC. But MacBook Pro will not boot from my external drive, no matter which key/combination i use during restart.
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https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1852633?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/faq/macbook-pro-boot-from-exte rnal-firewire-or-usb-drive.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1948
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LowLuster wrote:
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Operating system loaders are a class of the UEFI applications. As such, they are stored as files on a file system that can be accessed by the firmware, called EFI System partition (ESP). Supported file systems include FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12, and supported partition table scheme is GPT only. UEFI does not rely on a boot sector, although ESP provides space for it as part of the backwards compatibility.[26]
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Can UEFI Secure Boot be adopted and implemented by a variety of operating systems?
UEFI specifications are platform-independent, supporting multiple platforms and architectures. In addition, UEFI specifications are designed to promote cross-functionality, as well as to support broad adoption across multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Linux-based operating systems. The specifications are robust and can potentially complement—or even advance—other distributions, such as Linux-based distributions.
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MacBook Won't Book from External FW Drive

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