How to use an unused NTFS Formatted USB Drive for Windows Installation

[Juvanjkin2l]

I'm trying to restore a laptop that hasn't been used in 3-4 years. I dont understand why the USB drive used for booting is visible, but another USB drive with sufficient space (but unused) isn't showing up on the "Where do you want to install Windows?" screen. Can anyone offer assistance? My laptop has been out of commission for 3-4 years, the hard drive is on the brink of failure, and it's extremely slow to load the setup and other processes. However, I'm not sure why it won't recognize BOTH USB drives.

 

[Bighorn]

Windows generally won't install on removable devices but folks have made it work. If a USB drive can't be seen it could be a couple of things, one is older machines' BIOS may not recognize USB 3 [rely upon the OS to load USB 3 drivers] but have built-in support for USB 2. Another possibility is the formatting of a drive, Windows works with FAT32 up to 32GB, NTFS and exFAT storage devices, it does not work with Linux ext4 format, don't know if it will work with Mac's HPFS format. Have you checked the unused drive on a different computer, maybe it has lost its formatting, may need to be Initialized then formatted.