thanks for very constructive advice.
I postponed rehousing the HD in a usb enclosure
to first burn a knoppix DVD and give it a try.

Through trial and error i just found 'system info - summary'

but can't see any sign of a hard drive on the summary list.

The only storage listed is the DVD drive..

This might be interesting though..

If i click the heading 'Battery' - the message is

"No batteries found on this system"

Does that refer to the motherboard/bios battery
and if i try to be optimistic
might it have any bearing on the Hard Drive being lost from the system ???

Still haven't worked out how to explore knoppix folder structure
just in case there was a Hard Drive recognised by the linx install


cheers