Installing Ubuntu on External HDD; PC has no internal HDD
 

Hey everyone I'm a huge linux noob in need of help. I have a pentium 4 with no internal harddrive that I want run Ubuntu on. So I got my 250GB HDD partitioned; 38GB for main and 1 GB for the swap:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8f9c798a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 25302 203238283+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 * 25303 30274 39937590 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 30275 30401 1020127+ 83 Linux

So when I try to install from the live cd it gets to 15% "checking system files" and gets stuck there. I'm guessing this would have to do with my lack of internal hard drive ,but being the huge linux noob I am I don't know what to do. I have glanced through this ,but it seems way over my head.Any help in this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Well first off, I have to ask...why not just put a HDD into the machine?

Beyond that, not having one is not going to have an effect on the Live CD. Have you verified that you have a good download/burn by checking the CD from the boot menu when it loads up?

I don't have one. For Christmas I getting $250 or so worth of computer parts from newegg.com and a HDD is definitely on that list. I do have an old 4GB HDD ,but the connecting cable is too outdated to plug into the motherboard or so it seems. (I could be wrong.)
Yes, I have used it to install on a different machine and it worked without any issues. But just to be sure I'll run that check right now.

edit: Just ran the disk check and it found no errors.