I had the same kind of problems, and I finally managed to make it by partitioning the HDD anew... a couple of times. You should get the disk totally free from everything in the beginning of the disk - not always that easy, as I discovered. There may be a small partition, containing old system files. I recommend using a separate partition program, like gParted,
GParted -- About.
It may be a pain, it sure was for me. Feel free to ask, hopefully someone smarter comes along to give more and better advice.
And, you could check all cables, especially SATA ones, that they aren't installed in strict turns. I doubt that's the problem since if it was, you'd probably have your installation cut off earlier.
Anyway, best of luck. Luck many...