Here's the deal:

Setup recognized the intel storage driver loaded from USB, but still no drive visible, so I cannot proceed.

The file it recognizes is iaahci.inf which is the latest version of the driver.

Trivial, I know...any help is greatly appreciated

This is resolved.

Thank you!

its nice that you resolved your issue...but it would have also been nice if your 'provided' the information about how your resolved it....this might also help others when they view this 'topic' with a similar issue.