Fresh install problems

I installed initially to a 16GB USB stick which resulted in a blinking cursor with no grub. The PC is an i5 w/4GB RAM (this is for testing and playing around with not production.) I tried UEFI and BIOS with the same results. I have 4x 3Tb drives in there connected to SATA headers. When I added a new drive (80GB SATA) the installer doesnt see it despite BIOS seeing it. So i put in a 250GB with the same results. Any help?