Thankyou for that. But a) my CD drive isn't working and I can't, as yet, afford a new one and b) I see that Gparted is a partition manager -- I have got a partition on my new external HDD and can view it and its contents fine (as yet). I am just wondering abou my old HDD on which I didn't put a partition; I just gave it an old-fashioned format.
At the moment I think my equipment is functioning as it should, although I remain cautious. I am just wondering why I got the hardware rejections ('disk not formatted' panels, for both HDDs) I got earlier. I don't want to be working on a HDD if there are likely to be recurrent issues.
With thanks once more.