MBP not recognizing new HDD

I recently purchased a refurbished 15" MBP 2.4 santa rosa from the Apple Store. As it only came with a 160GB HDD I picked up a 500GB for it. After installing and rebooting from the install disc the machine cannot find the new drive. Thus making it impossible to re-install the OS.
Has anyone else had this problem? Any advice would be appreciated.

I re-checked to make sure I have a compatible drive as wellas all the connections. I reinstalled the original drive as I need it for a business trip in a few days.