Mac Mini :: 2011 Will Not Restore Via Internet Restore?

So here's my question:I've owned my share of MacBook Pro's, so I'm somewhat familiar, but not an expert. I got my mini last Friday from cowboom (a Best Buy affiliate), and since it's a pre-owned, it only came with the power cable and HDMI to DV-I adapeter.  For those that ordered these, a majority of the people posted that it did not come with an OS, but the Internet Restore option fixed the trick.  So I powered it on and got the flashing folder with the question mark. No OS. I did the Internet recovery and ran it through all the way to the the reinstall Lion screen. When asking what drive to install it on, there were no drives. I closed the installer and ran the disk utility and the only available drive was some basic drive that had a capacity less than 2GB. No other drives. I booted from my Lion that's on USB, but there's no drive to install it on. Any suggestions? I checked the warranty and the warranty cannot be verified. Some buyers said they had warranty from 8 months and up.  One said his warranty showed starting from the day he restored his mac.  I'm guessing because it was never registered I made an appointment tomorrow to take it to apple but is there something that can help avoid the trip?

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Mac mini