Bloody Hell -- new SSD just WON'T show up in Win7, even after formatting to NTFS. [View all]

I bought a used SSD on eBay, and the dimwit seller shipped it to me with a Linux install already on it. Good way to spread malware ! Win7 can't see the USB disk at all, nor can Win8 installer CD. *Finally* got it formatted after trying both Linux Lite and OSX 10.9 -- used OSX to triple-zero out the data -- and I set the first partition to NTSF. Now, I would think that attaching the USB device to a working Win7/HP box would get me what I want, but NOOOOOOOO ... even launching the Disk Management Tools fails to show the attached device. I've tried two different external drive cases, and connected it internally (SATA) to the machine I booted with Win8 installer. Nothing works. Do I have to reboot with an old MS-DOS disk and format w/ fdisk, or what ??

(WTF is wrong w/Microsoft ? Linux and OSX can see this disk and reformat it, Windows OS and disktools are both useless !)