Thanks, Wyoming. Yup, went back in yesterday and deleted the partition. Reinitialized and am up and running using it as a data drive. I wouldn't even have had to use it as a paperweight since it has a 5 year warranty and there are 2 years left on it.
This was all a good excuse to put Windows 7 on the SSD I got a while ago. Running the Windows 8 Consumers Preview on another drive, so life is good!