Please help - Bootcamp issues

Hey all,

Thank you in advance for your time in helping me. I have a MacBook Pro 2011, i5, 16GB RAM, running High Sierra 10.13.6. Recently I upgraded my hard drive to an SSD. When I went to reinstall Windows 7 on Bootcamp I found my optical disk stopped reading DVD's. I probably hadn't used the disk drive for over a year. I tried cleaning etc. it didn't work, so rather than replacing it I put in a second hard drive and brought an external optical disk drive.

Now when I go to Bootcamp, it says "You need an optical drive to install Windows. Connect an optical drive to your computer. You can't install Windows with a remote optical drive."

So after hours of googling I tried editing the bootcamp info.plist file. I added <string>MacBook8,1</string> to PreUSBBootSupportedModels and I removed "Pre". I also added <string>MacBook8,1</string> to UEFIOnlyModels.

With these edits I got as far as partitioning the drive and it booted to a black screen. Now I am greeted with the soul destroying text "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key". I tried connecting my external optical drive and my bootable USB (not at the same time) and had no success... I also tried mounting the disk with Daemon Tools

Help me Apple Kenobi, you're my only hope. :D