Transferring files to external hard drive frozen

So today I decided that I would put Linux (Ubuntu to be exact) on my laptop that I don't use as I have been wanting to get Linux for a while now, so I downloaded it and I figured the best way to put it on my laptop would be to put the .iso file onto my external hard drive (I would have used a flash drive, but I don't know where mine is currently) in order to boot it from there.  This is, however, as far as I have gotten, as for the last long while the copier has said that it only has to transfer 1 MB and it would take 5 seconds.

It's been like that for around 10 minutes at least.  I left it going in the hopes it would finish, but so far nothing.  The blue light on my hard drive keeps flashing, meaning something is happening in there, but I don't know if it's just trying and failing to copy, or what the case is.

So should I stop and try later or what?

Thanks.

 

EDIT:  I don't know what happened, but it just finished, so I'm good.

I hope that you did more than just copy the .iso file to the hard drive.  Use unetbootin or win32diskimager to copy the .iso over because that will make the .iso bootable.  Also make usre to go into the BIOS and change the boot priority.