Can't properly format SSD to GUID

I've got a 120gb OWC Electra SSD that I was using on an older Mac Mini just fine. I removed the SSD a month or two ago when I sold the Mini. I just received my new i7 Mini and bought the iFixit dual hard drive kit to install the SSD as my primary drive so I could use the 500gb default drive for storage. First thing I did was open the Mini to install the drive before even booting up the machine for the first time. The install physically went fine. When I booted up the computer is when I started having issues.

OSX loaded up and told me it found a drive it couldn't read (the SSD) and told me that it had to be initialized. No big deal since I was going to wipe it anyway and restore it with a Time Machine backup I'd made previously. I entered disk utility and noticed that when I told it to partition the drive, it would get about half way then just tell me it was partitioning and would take "X" number of minutes. The problem is the time frame wouldn't decrease, but rather increase minute by minute by minute and then the computer would even eventually go to sleep after being inactive. Clearly something is not right.

I then noticed that instead of the drive being a GUID partition format, it was set up as an MBR. I have no idea how that happened since I never used it in a Windows machine or dual booted with that drive. It was an OSX only drive. I now seem to be having an issue where I'm unable to format the drive to a GUID partition table in the "Options" menu on the partition tab of disk utility. It just hangs during the partition process. Same thing happens if I just try to erase the drive with disk utility.

Interestingly, there are random times when I have somehow been able to seemingly get the drive formatted as GUID and I can even access it in OSX. Then when I reboot the computer into recovery mode to attempt a new Lion install, the drive shows up as MBR again. Then I somehow manage to get it to be GUID again and it lets me choose the drive as an installation destination, but constantly times out on the Internet download. I assume this is happening because it's having a hard time writing the download file to the SSD (I know the Internet works because when I'm booted into OSX I can surf the web just fine using wifi or ethernet connection).

Anybody have any tips? I'd really like to get my SSD back up and running asap. I thought I'd be able to just pop it in, format, and restore. I guess nothing is ever easy... as usual

 

Okay. Noob question - the Mini doesn't have a disc drive and I don't have an external USB drive. I do have a PC with a disc drive so maybe I could use the remote disc function? What about using a USB flash drive?