Okay, I've solved my problem.
The issue was that my computer regonized the physical disk and its presence, but it wouldn't allow me to access it in Disk Manager. Also, I could create storage spaces and pools with the drive, but not use the drive alone.
After some googling, I went into Powershell and used Get-PhysicalDisk and then changed the usage from "retired" to "AutoSelect", following parts of this tutorial.
Then, when that didn't work, I used the command Reset-PhysicalDisk and rebooted my computer. Then, it showed up in DiskPart in cmdprmt, so I went to Disk Manager, rescaned for disks, and added a simple volume, and success! The SSD now is fully installed and operational.
I'm not sure why windows automatically marked it as retired, but I'm glad I solved the problem.