Starting up iMac from External Hard Drive

I posted this yesterday in "using your iMAc section" as a reply to "HD not Mounted", but no answers, So I thought I'd try here.
First, My iMac HD is bad,(as per apple tech at the store) I think(Hope) I was able to recover all files and transfer them over(w/ Disk WArrior) to my new LaCie d2 Quadra HD. As I was already having issues w/ my iMac HD, When I first plugged in the Lacie I installed the OS System onto the Lacie HD
in My previous post in the other section I said after install, it resatarted up OK from External HD before I ran Disk Warrior. Well Honestly Now I can't remember if it did or didn't, I have had so many attemps at restarting and trying to recover stuff over the past few weeks every failure and success are just blurring together.
Anyway, Now I would like to restart from my External HD to verify that all files transfer over OK, before having my iMAc HD replaced.
I have tried from the start up disk and get the message (on a black screen""Unable to find driver for this platform" and "Back Trace Terminal-invalid frame pointer.
with the OS system disk installer it recognizes the LaCie Ext/HD, But I didn't want to go thru the Archive and Recover process again. I also tried to start up in Firewire mode (thought it would go to the item that is hooked up) but all I got was the firewire symble moving around like a screen saver
Any Help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

I tried the Start/Option key combo, but it still wouldn't work. Went back to Apple store, they couldn't get it to start either and said that something in the Mac HD wasn't allowing the external to open. but he did hook it up to another mac and the files were there. So now they are replacing the HD and will make sure that external HD will boot up afterwards.
PHEW!!! Thank God for the Apple Care!!!
Thanks Very Much for the help

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