"Option" Command On Reboot To External Drive

My MBP runs Leopard 10.5.6 and I have an older SATA drive from a MBP running Tiger.
In fact it's the old drive out of my MBP prior to my Leopard upgrade.
Typically, with other drives all I needed to to access the "old" drive was to put it in a 2.5"; SATA case, press the "Option" button on reboot, see the drive as a bootable option and I'm in!
With this drive I can see it as a bootable option, but when I click on it it will spin for a while as if it's booting, but then where the Apple icon was I get a circle with a line through it... And I have to force a shut down.
If I connect the drive while running Leopard I can see and enter the drive... I can access files, etc. But I can't boot into it as if it were my primary drive.
Any ideas as to how I can boot to the Tiger 2.5"; drive?
Why do I need to do this?? I have a "Photo" alias on my Tiger desktop that I can't access by just clicking on it using Finder... For some reason it doesn't link to the actual photos. So, I want to essentially access the drive as if has never been removed from the MBP.
Thanks as always for your suggestions and help!

I'm not sure what you mean by "not have a startup disc." If you have an OS X Installer Disc, then you can use it as long as it's for the same version of OS X you have installed. Just do the following:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
There's no assurance that this will get the external drive to boot your computer. After the installer has loaded and you use DU to repair the drive you can then also select Startup Disk from the Utilities menu of the installer.

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