HDD installation problem with Mint

[Husse]

Did you put the old drive on the same ribbon as the drive you use to boot Mint?
If so that's the reason
You should avoid having two hard disks on the same ribbon - some disks don't like each other
Make the disk master and put it on the ribbon with the CD/DVD player
Noter that the master should be at the end and the slave in the middle, but this is not absolutely necessary
If you've got two CD/DVD players move one
If you've got a hard disk and a CD/DVD player the only thing is to try and see if the old disk is tolerated there
If it's an old less than 8 GB disk this could possibly force the other larger disk on the same ribbon to be treated with the 8 GB limit even if I don't think so

[Husse]

In the end, then, this older slave drive is attached on its own.

Well that probably explains it - make it master - hard disks don't like being slave, particularly when they are alone, but it works many times, so....

[Husse]

You got it right

If yes, what will that do when the bios recognises 2 master drives installed?

Nothing what so ever
Master/slave is a per IDE channel setting
To be absolutely correct the boot order may change, but then it's just to set it right again

[Husse]

It's not completely abnormal to have to try a couple of times
What brand and model is the hard disk?
To be sure - you don't even see grub?

[Husse]

This was strange!
To have that happening so late in the boot process....
I don't know what could cause it, but I have a few suggestions
What happens if you boot from the live CD?
Is the drive empty? Any "traces" of Linux on it? I was thinking that for some reason Mint tries to read something it can't read properly from it.
Can you format it if you are not to keep the data on it?
Out in the blue......