I was trying to erase my macbook air and after I erased everything from the disk when I tried to restart it the disk was unavailable and did not pop up. So I shut down the mac and tried to go back to the Disk utility but this flashing question mark folder keeps popping up.
MacBook Air
The folder with a flashing question mark means that your startup disk is no longer available or doesn't contain a working Mac operating system. The fix will be to restart the computer in Recovery mode and reinstall the macOS.
Which macOS you can reinstall will depend on the age of the computer and which OS was previously installed.
If that MacBook is a late 2010 model or older and never had Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installed, then it will not have a recovery partition on the drive and the steps in the Related Article above your post will not work. In that case, you will need to use the original software install DVD that came with the computer to reinstall the OS. Or possibly locate and download a compatible OS and create a bootable USB drive to reinstall the OS.
What model year is that MacBook Air?
Please see: If your Mac starts up to a question mark - Apple Support
Also: Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
The folder with a flashing question mark means that your startup disk is no longer available or doesn't contain a working Mac operating system. The fix will be to restart the computer in Recovery mode and reinstall the macOS.
Which macOS you can reinstall will depend on the age of the computer and which OS was previously installed.
If that MacBook is a late 2010 model or older and never had Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installed, then it will not have a recovery partition on the drive and the steps in the Related Article above your post will not work. In that case, you will need to use the original software install DVD that came with the computer to reinstall the OS. Or possibly locate and download a compatible OS and create a bootable USB drive to reinstall the OS.
What model year is that MacBook Air?
Please see: If your Mac starts up to a question mark - Apple Support
Also: Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
how do i get rid of the question mark? i tried the step but it did not work
