You need to make the whole drive bootable and not a specific partition.
Partition Magic, from what I remember of it, can do this. It also depends on WHERE the bootable partition is. With a 500GB drive if it's located past
the first 3GB (i believe) it won't boot. There's a limit imposed by the BIOS
on where the bootable partition is in the partition map. I would start over again and set the entire drive bootable.
PS: I know you were, or still are, following the AF447 thread as I've seen
you there. You might find this of interest:
Guyana newspapers report a large section of AF 447 and other items have washed up on the beaches there.