Hi!
When you can’t enter safe mode, it’s most of the time caused by the motherboard!
But lets try another known working hard drive first! Be sure it’s formatted on the PC and that there is a partition on it. Then put it in your PS3 and it should give you an error on the TV! Now put a USB drive in with the PS3 software on it and install it.
This should work. If not, it is motherboard related, then you do need to take it out to check.
Please let us know how it goes!