Im making this as documentation to help others incase they run into similar circumstances.
okay, so im giving away my old 2015 MacBook Air 11 inch away (family member) after purchasing new MacBook. In order to keep data private, I decided to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall the OS. the operating system originally wouldn't download after I erased the hard drive so I thought it would be a bright idea to turn off my computer and bring it back into recovery mode - big mistake
So, when I tried turning the Mac back on and enter recovery mode, this spinning globe came on and so I left it up since my new MacBook was ready to pick up and when I got back home with it, the globe was still there with some error message (don't remember what it was). When I tried to turn it on without any commands, a blinking folder with a question mark came up. this was about an hour and a half of waiting. anyways, I did research into it, and found a new command that helped. instead of command R, I pressed the option when turning it on and this allowed me to connect to the internet and after that, the recovery came on about 15 or 20 minutes later, so im guessing the first time, it wasn't connected to the internet which why it didn't do anything and got an error message.
so, I tried downloading the os again, and it wouldn't give me any option for where to download. I contacted apple to figure out how to proceed, through the discussion, the guy thought my hard drive must have failed due to the blinking folder which I knew wasn't true because it was working fine before and its probably related to the fact the hard drive didn't have any os on it. so, while talking to him, I though about downloading the os directly on a flash drive and since I didn't have any way to plug it into my new computer (regular usb flash drive and Macs now have usb c), I tried installing the os from my old computer to the usb instead of direct to my hard drive. some error message came up about formatting, and I realized that in the past, I had to format my hard drive which I did not do this time. I formatted it then tried download it again and it worked. My old computer installed the OS and is almost ready to reuse.
So in short,
-I couldn't get into recovery mode for a second time because my computer wasn't able to connect to the internet. Pressing option key solved that.
-My hard drive would not accept the reinstallation because it was not formatted correctly.
if you have any comments or questions, feel free to post.
okay, so im giving away my old 2015 MacBook Air 11 inch away (family member) after purchasing new MacBook. In order to keep data private, I decided to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall the OS. the operating system originally wouldn't download after I erased the hard drive so I thought it would be a bright idea to turn off my computer and bring it back into recovery mode - big mistake
So, when I tried turning the Mac back on and enter recovery mode, this spinning globe came on and so I left it up since my new MacBook was ready to pick up and when I got back home with it, the globe was still there with some error message (don't remember what it was). When I tried to turn it on without any commands, a blinking folder with a question mark came up. this was about an hour and a half of waiting. anyways, I did research into it, and found a new command that helped. instead of command R, I pressed the option when turning it on and this allowed me to connect to the internet and after that, the recovery came on about 15 or 20 minutes later, so im guessing the first time, it wasn't connected to the internet which why it didn't do anything and got an error message.
so, I tried downloading the os again, and it wouldn't give me any option for where to download. I contacted apple to figure out how to proceed, through the discussion, the guy thought my hard drive must have failed due to the blinking folder which I knew wasn't true because it was working fine before and its probably related to the fact the hard drive didn't have any os on it. so, while talking to him, I though about downloading the os directly on a flash drive and since I didn't have any way to plug it into my new computer (regular usb flash drive and Macs now have usb c), I tried installing the os from my old computer to the usb instead of direct to my hard drive. some error message came up about formatting, and I realized that in the past, I had to format my hard drive which I did not do this time. I formatted it then tried download it again and it worked. My old computer installed the OS and is almost ready to reuse.
So in short,
-I couldn't get into recovery mode for a second time because my computer wasn't able to connect to the internet. Pressing option key solved that.
-My hard drive would not accept the reinstallation because it was not formatted correctly.
if you have any comments or questions, feel free to post.