MacBook Air ssd

[longislandman99]

Hello I brought a MacBook Air off eBay and it didn’t come with a ssd I purchased a new ssd I was wondering now do I reinstall the os on the Mac?

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can make a bootable usb or if its new enough do a newwork install.

[longislandman99]

It’s from 2012 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, longislandman99 said:

It’s from 2012 

Then make a bootable osx install usb on anouther mac.

[longislandman99]

Ok thanks 

[Husky]

You have a few options.

 

1. Hold Option-Command-R on startup to start internet recovery and download macOS, you will see a spinning globe icon. This is not the best way as it will download an old version on macOS so you will have to update it straight after.

 

2. Take it to an Apple Store and have them install macOS onto it for you.

 

3. Install macOS yourself. You need access to another Mac. Go to the Mac App Store and download the latest version of macOS. Get a flash drive or external hard drive, connect it, open Disk Utility.app and erase the drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the name MyVolume. This will erase all data on it so make sure you got everything you need. Paste this command into Terminal.app once the download of macOS High Sierra is complete and follow the instructions: 

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app

It will automatically create a bootable USB installer for you. Once it is done, eject and disconnect the drive and go to your Mac that you want to install macOS on. Connect the drive and turn the Mac on while holding the Option key. Choose Install macOS High Sierra on the boot menu and once it is done booting, choose Disk Utility from the menu and select your new SSD and click erase. Use APFS and GUID Partition Map and name it Macintosh HD or whatever. Once it is done, close Disk Utility and click Install macOS. Go through the steps and point it to your newly erased SSD. Keep the external drive plugged in until you are finished installing and arrive at the desktop, then you can open Disk Utility and erase it so that you can use it as a normal drive again. Then you are done!

 

Hope this helps