can i reformat ssd with cloned image to do clean install instead?

I cloned my HDD to my new SSD and it seems like it did it without error. However, I didn't physically swap them as I needed some guidance about the location of the SSD when doing the first reboot and now 4 days later I have fixed a couple of ongoing issues with my system uninstalled some no longer useful apps and installed a couple larger apps that would be better for the SSD to already be installed because of the disc writing limits. Here are some questions that are nagging head about wanting to have a successful migration today.

1. can I hook the SSD back up to my laptop and reformat it and will that erase all traces of the Source drive?
2. do I format the SSD to have no allocation and be in NTFS format?
3. after creating a new disc image of my current system on my laptop (which I presume should be a complete image including the boot and recovery sections) which will be stored on my FreeAgent external usb hard drive the next step should be?

do I...

a. then remove existing hdd from laptop and plug the ssd in (while shut down of course)
b. insert bootable recovery usb thumb drive and restart the computer pressing F12 to enable AHCI .
c. plug in external usb and restore system image to ssd
d. anything else? do I have to use Trim for anything?

Please let me know if this seems like I am doing what I should be doing.

Thanks,

Danny R

Steps 1,2, and 3 all you have to do is 3, image your ENTIRE hdd, then reimage all of those partitions to the ssd.

The contents of your image have to fit on the ssd. Of course :)

Don`t worry about setting up the ssd, the reimage should take care of everything.

Trim is automatically enabled in windows.

I would just check that the alignment is correct with Partition Wizard or Diskpart. PW is way easier for a novice. It can check it and correct it for you.