Can't install windows 8.1 on early 2011 MBP

Hey all,
I'm having problems installing Windows 8.1 on my Early 2011 MBP (MacBookPro8,2). When my superdrive died I installed an SSD for the boot drive and kept the original hard drive as a secondary drive. I used BCA (modified to support USB) to create a USB 2 Windows 8.1 install drive from an ISO I previously created. I also had it partition the hard drive. When it reboots I get the "no bootable device found" and blinking cursor issue. I've tried holding down option and choosing EFI, but i've picked up during the last week that installing through EFI on my MacBook Pro isn't possible. Does anyone have any ideas on how to solve this?

I ended up coming across this last night:
http://malwaretips.com/threads/installing-windows-on-a-mac-with-a-damaged-superd rive.32474/
I am in the process of testing this out, but currently I'm stuck with an issue with winclone not expanding the image of the usb install disk to use all the space in the partition. However I did boot into the Windows installer and didn't run into the "couldn't find partition" , "no bootable disk", or "not an MBR" errors I've seen before.
I Think the key for non supported hardware and Windows 8 or later is to create the bootable usb in windows and not through BCA. I actually used the VMWare Fusion trial and a windows 10 technical demo image to do the monkeying around in windows. Hope this helps someone else. I'll keep updating.

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