I tried everything I read online, to no avail. I then unhooked the main battery and the CMOS battery and let the thing sit overnight. I powered it up and set date/time and set usb3.0 to auto in bios. I tried the restore one more time and it worked!
This was way too many hoops to jump thru for a drive that died 4 days outside of warranty. I'm buying ASUS next time.