>>>What are you trying to do, exactly?
I broke my macbook pro early 2011 by spilling water, doh!
It was running 10.7.4
I managed to salvage the HD from it and was happy it survived.
I was able to use that HD to boot up via USB to another (borrowed) macbook pro early 2011 so I could continue working on jobs and back-up my data.
I bought a mid 2012 Macbook pro today (running 10.7.3 which I updated online) and was surprised I could not boot from it via USB with my old HD.
I was hoping to reformat the drive on my new Mac 2012 and copy the contents from the old HD, so that all my settings and software remained the same.
But it's beginning to sound like if I do that I won't be able to boot my new Mac at all?
BTW, I was shocked to find new Macs don't come shipped with start-up OS discs. I have bought many new Macs before and I was always able to boot from the CD or DVD supplied.
So now I feel like I'm in double-danger, because in the past if I made a mistake I could just reinstall my system but it seems there is no way to do that now?
Regards Craig