How do I use bcdedit to boot from old Vista harddrive on eSata port?

I bought a new hd for my existing laptop which had Vista Ultimate on it.
I removed the Vista hd and fixed it in an eSata enclosure, then loaded
Windows 7 on new hd
I successfully created dualboot on new hd with Windows 2008 R2 vhd, using
bcdedit (with clear instructions from a colleague)
I hoped to add third boot option using bcdedit for the eSata drive so that I
could use my existing Vista drive. I used thhese commands:
bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Vista on E drive"
bcdedit /set newid device partition=E:
bcdedit /set newid osdevice partition=E:

When I select this boot option, Vista tries to repair itself, then fails.
What am I doing something wrong?

Supplementary question : Can I turn the Vista drive into a VHD file? Then I
could move this to my new hd....