I deleted the Macintosh HD drive using disc utility on my 2016 MacBook Air in an attempt to restore factory settings. When I try to install the new OS (Monterey) it tells me there is not enough free space. How can I fix this? I don’t understand how I delete a drive but then the system still shows over 97 GB of other volumes and only 24 GB of free space.
Presumably you intended to erase everything so the way to address your present concern is to begin with Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support. When selecting the device to erase, be sure to include Step 4.
Then, refer to How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support. Under the heading "If you're using any other Mac" use the following key chord when booting Recovery:
Presumably you intended to erase everything so the way to address your present concern is to begin with Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support. When selecting the device to erase, be sure to include Step 4.
Then, refer to How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support. Under the heading "If you're using any other Mac" use the following key chord when booting Recovery:
That's just not right. When you used Disk Utility to erase the device, did you select "Macintosh HD" or the device that appears above it? The "device" in this sense is the physical drive with an immutable name such as "APPLE SSD ..." followed by some text. That's what you need to select, and erase.
If you do not see that device, be sure to select "Show All Devices" from Disk Utility's View menu.
Is Boot Camp involved at all?
Thank you for your reply John. I performed the disc erase as described and followed the guide on reinstalling macOS as well. All of this seems fine until I attempt to reinstall the OS on the Macintosh HD drive and that is when it tells me there is not enough memory. I need to know how to erase additional files or whatever to free up the needed memory. It asks for about an additional 4GB of space. I don’t understand how a drive that has been erased is still showing so much memory taken up by “other volumes”. Isn’t that the point of erasing the drive ?
Resetting MacBook Air to factory
