BREAK THROUGH
With the SSD "temporarily installed" as per the above post (Picture 4) I revisited Disk Management and the SSD was now visible as "Disk 1 - 447.13 GB - Unallocated".
I clicked on Disk 1 and an install wizzard appeared so I ran that creating a simple volume (no partitions), named the drive s:\ (For SSD), file system NTFS and unticked the quick format box, so I presume it did a long format.
Voilà, the SSD is now visible and accessible.
To test it, I saved a few Word and Excell files to the SSD and then retrieved them. All seems to be working well.
Captain WD, I could not see the SSD when installed externally on a laptop and I was hesitant to install the SSD in my old desktop - a 10+ year old Dell running Win XP with a very unreliable HDD. Luckily I did not need to.
Scott; I think events have overtaken your latest suggestions. I presume the Win7 format adequate, or I need not do the DBAN formatting. The Disk Management now reads as follows:
I guess the SYSTEM is a 2 GB partition on the HDD and that this was done automatically as Win7 was installed?
My intentions now, after I catch up on some other matters, is to:
ONE - Clone the entire HDD, programs and data, to the SSD and then remove the HDD.
TWO - If this fails, then reformat the SSD and do fresh install of everything.
THREE - around Easter, upgrade to Win10.
Again, yet again, thank you for all your help and reassurance.
Tom