HP N40L doesn't see any hard drives

I have an HP N40L with 6x4tb hard drives. I initially tried to install version 4 with a thumb drive and installing the OS to a 2.5'' usb portable drive. I used the AMD version since the CPU is AMD.
I never had any success with the install and I'd end up at a grub rescue prompt after the install. The installation only had the install thumb drive and the 2.5'' installation drive plugged in. When I had no luck, I tried to install the OS to the 2.5'' drive when using an open sata port. Still nothing so I tried version 3. Progress was made here BUT, at the webgui, I see nothing. Just a user option, general information, but nothing on the hard drives. And yes, they are plugged in only after the installation is completed and a power down.
I never get any errors during the installation.
I'm using the BIOS mod so that I can use all the sata/esata ports for my setup. During boot, the bios detects all drives. I wanna say it said IDE next to all of them. I went through the settings to make sure they were all raid capable.
What am I missing here?

:oops: I was so focused on changing the root password that I was mistaking it for the admin account.
so I found everything afterwards. Then, I moved the OS drive from a sata connection to the usb port on the mobo. That apparently didn't work so well as it put me to a grub rescue prompt. I then started over on the install but since the OS kept showing up as sdb, I knew I was screwed. So, I burned the image to a cd and installed the OS that way. My usb OS drive showed up as sda and I'm up and running.