It's not clear from your description whether you mean that your drive has failed, or that it is missing in Windows. Let me suggest you click the link below to my troubleshooting guide and follow the instructions to test the hardware.
Apple QuickTime Player is by no means a required program. (It's an alternative media player.) It used to be installed as part of iTunes, and many people got it that way... but even iTunes no longer demands QuickTime.
I am installing a 32gb ssd cache in my inspiron 13z. I have submitted a question here about how to do this to which you posted a paper explaining the process. However, my bios only has options for AHCI mode and ATA Mode. The intel site says that neither of these will work.