My apologies, I've been very tardy in responding about my path to resolution on this issue - and - it's been so long since I did this that the specific details about my undertaking are forgotten.
After searching/Googling other experiences/resolution-paths to issues similar to this, I ended up performing a rather intricate/technical (at least to me) procedure to install the appropriate driver (and associated software) to allow me to be able to actually recognize the UPGRADE disk and USE it at the opportune time that the upgrade procedure required it. I guess what surprises me is that the resolution to this issue was not something "non-technical" and therefore very intimidating for a non-technical person. I am somewhat technical and that was my salvation.
As I post this, I tried to retrace my investigative steps to re-discover what it was that provided me with my solution; I believe the resolution involved installing a VMWare SCSI driver as noted in http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1015396
I am now running Windows 8 64-bit.