I accidently deleted everything from my MacBook Air (Early 2014). How to recover?

Question

So I was trying to reset my old MacBook Air (Early 2014) to find some use for it, but while doing that I happened to delete everything, including recovery.

Now I'm stuck on a globe page with a WiFi selection and selecting my SSID does nothing.

How would I go about reinstalling macOS on the drive?

Have you been able to connect to a WiFi network? The spinning globe means it’s trying to find a remote boot server. Without an internet connection, this will not work. If you can’t get a WiFi connection and you have a Ethernet cable to your network router, you’ll need a Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter. — IconDaemon, Dec 27 '23 at 02:01
@IconDaemon I selected my SSID but then nothing more happens. It just sits there for hours on end — SP73, Dec 27 '23 at 15:32
If you have access to the router, restarting it may be worth a try. — nohillside, Dec 27 '23 at 18:02

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 27 '23 at 16:48

You can use the description in this answer to download older versions of macOS (anything up to/including Big Sur (macOS 11) will work on your old MBA) and create a bootable USB stick. Then use the stick to boot the MBA and reinstall macOS.

Alternatively (as even Big Sur is rather outdated and doesn't get updates any longer), install a light-weight Linux (e.g. MX Linux) to get some more years of use out of the hardware.

I accidently deleted everything from my MacBook Air (Early 2014). How to recover?

1 Answers1