Trying to install Windows on a partition of second internal HD

Question

Hello,
As the title mentions, I'm trying to install Windows on my iMac 11,1 in which I've swapped out the Superdrive for a SSD.
My current setup is with 10.8 boot drive + recovery partition on the SSD and an HFS+ data partition on the second drive (HDD).
What I would like is for the SSD to contain the same partitions, but for the HDD to also include a bootable Windows partition.
Two problems with this:
1. The computer won't boot from a USB drive so I can't make a proper installer (out of the legal Windows 7 .iso I have).
The two ways around this I have read about (and tried) are to use virtualization to convince the installer it's running from a CD and not an .iso and to put the install files on a separate bootable partition of the internal drive. I managed to use Parallels 8 to install Windows 7 to a second partition on the HDD (though it couldn't make some writes due to security issues), but couldn't make it bootable. I tried making a hybrid MBR (using gdisk) on the HDD before installing Windows 7 to the partition, which made it bootable, but Windows got stuck before it loaded. This leads into problem #2.
2. The HDD doesn't know how to boot itself. My suspician is that the bootloader and/or BIOS emulation code (I don't really understand how this works) doesn't exist on the HDD. I have no idea how to fix this issue.
Any help would be appreciated in getting this to work. I'm familiar with the command line, so don't be afraid I'm going to wimp out if you ask me to use it.

Answer 1

My understanding of how Bootcamp works is it creates a hybrid MBR that uses GPT in each section.
I tried last night to install Windows using Parallels 8 on a partition of my SSD created by the Bootcamp Assistant. However, Windows still wouldn't boot. I then tried to edit the MBR myself using gdisk, leaving me with the windows partition not even showing up in in the UI after I hold option at startup.
Here's the output from fdisk:
~ # sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Password:
Disk: /dev/disk0          geometry: 31130/255/63 [500118192 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  461055999] <Unknown ID>
*2: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 461056000 -   39061504] HPFS/QNX/AUX
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     
~ # sudo fdisk /dev/disk1
Disk: /dev/disk1          geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 - 1953525167] <Unknown ID>
2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused     
Here's the output from gpt:
~ # sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=256060514304; sectorsize=512; blocks=500118192
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 500118191
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6        
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  460383864      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  460793504     262496        
  461056000   39061504      3  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  500117504        655        
  500118159         32         Sec GPT table
  500118191          1         Sec GPT header
~ # sudo gpt -r -vv show disk1
Password:
gpt show: disk1: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168
gpt show: disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6        
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  1951845952      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1952255592     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1953525128           7        
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
And diskutil:
~ # diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *256.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Jane                    235.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data                         20.0 GB    disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS JaneHDD                 999.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
Any suggestions?