Trying to boot from an external hard drive - drive not recognized at boot

Question

I am trying to upgrade my Operating system. I am going from Mac OS 10.4.11 to Mac OS 10.6.
Hardware:
Model Name:
MacBook Pro 15"
  Model Identifier:
MacBookPro1,1
  Processor Name:
Intel Core Duo
  Processor Speed:
2.16 GHz
  Number Of Processors:
1
  Total Number Of Cores:
2
  L2 Cache (per processor):
2 MB
  Memory:
2 GB
  Bus Speed:
667 MHz
To backup my existing environment  I bought Seagate Free Agent GoFlex 500GB for PC and Mac. USB 3.0 but backward comaptible to USB 2.0 which is what my laptop is. The system requirements included support for 10.4.11. I attached the drive to my lap top and used disk utility to format to Mac Extended OS (journaled). It recognized the drive immediately.
I used SuperDuper 2.6.4 to copy all files to the external drive. It seemed to copy just fine. It said it made the drive bootable. TO test it, I shutdown the system and started it back up with the option key pressed, but it only gave me my original HD as a choice to boot from. When the system came up, it didn't recognize the external drive. I unplugged the drive and re attached it and it seemed to recognize it, I trued to reboot again and it doesn't recognize the hard drive on reboot. Only when I un attach and reattach it.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I haven't forgotten, it just takes forever to get to a result when backing up an entire system.
So here's what I did. I agree with this idea:
Limnos wrote:
mac-sales.com I mentioned above is the OWC Ogelthorpe uses.
I suspect StartupDisk is seeing a nicely mounted drive connected in a bootable interface (USB) with all the needed files (palced there by SuperDuper).  However, what it doesn't know if that drive isn't really accessible until the computer has properly booted because the chipset doesn't work without full system support.  This is not at all unusual in external drives. Many years ago you really has to insist upon having an Oxford chipset in an enclosure to guarantee booting, but for general backup use any chipset was fine.
I had an old Lacie drive I have used for file backups over the years:
Disk:
Name :
LaCie Group SA
Type :
Disk
Disk Identifier :
disk1
Media Name :
WDC WD80 0BB-00JHC0 Media
Media Type :
Generic
Connection Bus :
FireWire
Connection Type :
External
Connection ID :
58629628097197639
Partition Type :
GUID_partition_scheme
Device Tree :
/PCI0@0/PCIB@1E/FRWR@3/node@d04b560c0bf647/sbp-2@c000/@0:0
Writable :
Yes
Ejectable :
Yes
Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed :
No
Location :
External
Total Capacity :
74.5 GB (80,026,361,856 Bytes)
S.M.A.R.T. Status :
Not Supported
Disk Number :
1
Partition Number :
0
Name :
Macintosh HD
Type :
Volume
Disk Identifier :
disk1s2
Mount Point :
/Volumes/Macintosh HD 1
File System :
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Connection Bus :
FireWire
Partition Type :
Apple_HFS
Device Tree :
/PCI0@0/PCIB@1E/FRWR@3/node@d04b560c0bf647/sbp-2@c000/@0:2
Writable :
Yes
Universal Unique Identifier :
438A4768-6F2C-3A0A-96A3-AEF60B7B8815
Capacity :
44.5 GB (47,768,887,296 Bytes)
Free Space :
4.2 GB (4,464,005,120 Bytes)
Used :
40.3 GB (43,304,882,176 Bytes)
Number of Files :
432,903
Number of Folders :
97,585
Owners Enabled :
No
Can Turn Owners Off :
Yes
Can Be Formatted :
Yes
Bootable :
Yes
Supports Journaling :
Yes
Journaled :
Yes
S.M.A.R.T. Status :
Not Supported
Disk Number :
1
Partition Number :
2
I moved everything from the Lacie to the SEaget - at least is it will be useful for something!
Erased the Lacie, partitioned it to 2 partitions.
Formnatted the partition GUID as suggested. I had named the partition for the backup something cutre like 10.4.11 OS clone.
Used Disk Utility>Restore to backup/clone the environment.
During the backup, it renamed the partition Macintosh HD, which was encouraging. After waiting a very long time for the backup, I was able to try to test booting from it and received many diagnostic errors including permission type errors, some of the files in /etc did not beloing to root. I have a couple of things I am going to try  but thought I'd throw it out here since you guys have kept me pointed in the right direction.
Any more ideas as to why the drive won' t boot? Did I not give the partition enough space? Is it the chipset thing?