Setting up new Sata hard drive (HELP!!!)

[daniell61]

Hello,
I just got a new Wester Digital 500 Gb hard drive (sata) today and for some reason i can put ubuntu 12.04 lts on it but i can not boot it for some reason and the bios recognize's the new drive when i turn on the pc and it says something like (MB) RAID
next to the drive but its not a raid configuration even though i have a IDE HDD in there but i unplug the power connector :3 and i can install ubuntu 12.04 lts but i says: BOOT FAIL (press enter to retry)
and im putting ubuntu on this pc from a USB 2.0 flash drive.

pc specs(to my knowledge)
BIOS: Phoenix 2006 build
CPU: INTEL XEON
GPU: something related to ATI
PSU:400 watts
HDD: one Sata 500 gb and one 80 gb IDE(the sata is brand new and the ide is old from 2001 and there both western digital)
cd rom: one sony cd rom and one emachines cd rom (only onoe has a ide plugged in as the ide hdd has the other one)
floppy drive: one old one from a 2001 emachines.
USB: 2.0 (2 in the front 2 in the back)
sound card: integrated (possibly fried because i cant get sound...thank u amazon for selling cheap usb sound cards)
ethernet: 10/100/1000 MB data transfers
pc build: SERVER
motherboard: intel ?????(i have no freaking idea what it is or how to find out :?: )

PLEASE REPLY SOON
type of linux: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

 

[Dr_JRE]

Check your BIOS settings. The sata controller should be set to AHCI or IDE, not RAID.
Check your boot device priority. It could be attempting a drive with no boot sector.

When you installed Ubuntu, it may have mistakenly installed the boot loader onto the USB. I have seen Kubuntu 12.04 try to do this more than once.

Try Ubuntu setup again, but during the hard drive setup portion, manually configure the drives. Make sure to re-use the large partition as "/" and the small one as swap. on the bottom of that screen (you'll probably have to scroll down) there is the option for where the boot loader is to be installed. this should be installed onto the drive you are attempting to boot from (typically the same drive as the "/" and "swap" partitions.)