Macbook Air won't format or partition SSD

I bought a 64gb SSD from Active Media Products, http://www.activemp.com/SSD/18-IDE-PATA-ZIF-SSD-Z4.htm. It reports MacBook Air 1st gen support.

Install was smoother than expected. Disk Utility actually sees the drive, but when I try to format or erase, it reports:

Partition failed for this reason: Input/Output error.

I'm running 10.5.8 booting off of USB (my old drive is dead, thus the reason for upgrading to SSD).

Am I plain out of luck until I find an apple-certified SSD? Or is is the fact that I'm this far (it appears in Disk Utility) mean I have a chance?

These are the details Disk Utility reports:

Disk Description: ACTIVEMP-ZIF-SSD-64G
Connection Bus: ATA
COnnection Type: Internal
Connection ID: Device 0

Total Cap: 59.6 GB
Write Status: Read/write
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
Partition Map Scheme: Unformatted

'About this Mac'

Model Name: MacBook Air
Model Identifier: MacBookAir1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 1.6 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBA11.00BB.B03