"No hard disk detected" sounds like the type of error/info message that your BIOS would output, not the Linux kernel

Is this the case?  You mentioned that you are booting from a USB device; is the USB device this 250 gb hard drive, or something else?

If it is indeed an error from your BIOS (I assume it is), then the likely configuration is that you are using a USB device to boot from, with the hard disk being a separate device that you intended to store files on (which does not contain a boot loader)...  Try pressing F12 at boot (or sometimes F8; whatever the BIOS tells you to do for a boot menu) and see if you can boot from your USB device.  The problem is probably that the boot order is wrong