SSD will not initialize - Data error (cyclic redundancy check)

I added a 256GB SSD drive to my Alienware 18x (btx) system.  I'm attempting to initialize the drive with the Windows 7 Disk Management utility and get the *** Data error (cyclic redundancy check) *** error.  I've considered trying to fix it with chkdsk but I have no drive letter or even a volume to reference (no reference to the drive using mountvol).  I've tried to initialize the disk with Acronis and get read errors on the drive.

I don't think there is a physical issue with the drive.  It was being used with no problem just days ago.  I suspect that the issue is that it was a member disk to a RAID 0 configuration on my previous laptop.  The disk management utility reports it as 476.95 GB in size which is approaching double its actual size.  I think there is something about that drive that is making it think it's still part of the RAID 0 setup.

I don't care about any of the data on this drive.  I simply want it to initialize, set up a single, full size partition, and format it to be used as a single data drive in my new system.  The system currently recognizes the drive in some limited sense, but not enough to set it up to be used.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.