Good afternoon, this is the first time I participate here as I'm new to Linux. I've been trying to solve the following problem for over a week without any sign of success so I hope there's a much more knowledgeable person here that can give me a solution.

I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro (8,2) with Mac OS X running in a SSD. Then, instead of the Optical bay, I have a HDD in where I would like to install Ubuntu to run it natively. I've tried to do the normal installation process, with or without rEFIt, but it seems the problem resides on the communication between the device containing the Ubuntu .iso file and the laptop. It doesn't allow communication with the boot CD or USB drive. It usually says: “Loading bootlogo...” after I click on the “boot from CD, Linux Icon”.

After trying several things, I would like to know if I could install Ubuntu on the HDD as an external HDD (using a friend's Window's system) and then simply put it back into my laptop so as to become an Internal HDD again. I guess, I would have to reinstall many drivers and so on, but would this approach work?

Thanks in advance and sorry for this huge block of text