Help with PS3 HDD!? New hard drive installed?

I am trying to fix a ps3 a family member had laying around. It had no hard drive, so I purchased a WD Scorpio black 320 fb SATA hard drive, 7200 rpm. Installed the hard drive... Did the necessary downloading of software onto USB flash drive. No matter what I do I receive errors. At first they were saying no data was found, then that there was a hard disk error and now no matter what option is chosen from safe mode it just gives me a black serious error has occurred screen. It does glitch from a screen to this, so I know the system recognizes something but it's failing. Any one have advice? Experienced this issue? I don't know if the old hard drive is around or not, will find out soon. I'm also going to try and use on older version of software and see of that makes a difference. Thanks for any help!