My Mackbook Air after the bot sound shows a flasing the folder with a question mark

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Level 1

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My Mackbook Air after the bot sound shows a flasing the folder with a question mark

I managed to reach the recovery center passing the Command R and directing to reinstall the El Captain X operational system, however after accepting all the terms of condition the screen to select the hard disk didn't show an option. I went back to the disk utility and noticed that I only have one partition available winch my understanding is the recovery partition system (I concluded that because is a partition with only 2 GB of space). Seems like my hard drive just disappeared. The weirdest part is that it happened after I managed to bot the OS, but just device went out of battery.

Does my hard drive just when off hardware or is there something else that I can try on the software?

I did all the recovery online options available but I realized that I've been done only on the recovery partition with 2 GB of space.

Posted on Jun 10, 2025 11:10 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

157,296 points

Jun 10, 2025 03:19 PM in response to nivaldo64

Yes, the A1465 is an 11-inch Mid-2012 MBA model. It originally came with OS X 10.7 (Lion) & can be upgraded to macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina). It is considered 'obsolete' as far as Apple Support is concerned, so you may find that it will be of limited value going forward, but that's totally your call.

Based on what you're describing — the MacBook dying during installation and then no internal disk being visible except for the 2 GB recovery image — it's quite likely the SSD either failed or lost its connection somehow. This model uses a proprietary Apple SSD (blade-style), and unfortunately, they are known to fail, especially with age. The fact that you’re only seeing “Apple Disk Image Media” strongly suggests you're booted into the internet recovery environment, which is a virtual disk image, not the actual drive.

Regardless, there are still a few things you can try:

Start by resetting both the Mac's SMC & NVRAM.
- Reset the SMC on your Mac - Apple Support
- Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

Next, try using Internet Recovery Mode this time.

How to start up your Mac in Internet Recovery Mode - iDB

This should give you a globe icon, meaning it’s downloading a fresh recovery image from Apple — more up-to-date than the local 2 GB one.

Next, open Disk Utility again. In the sidebar, click "View" and select Show All Devices (not just volumes). See if the internal SSD appears as a physical device, even if unmounted or uninitialized.

Finally, while still in recovery, from the top menu go to Utilities > System Information. Under Storage or NVMExpress (depending on macOS version), see if the SSD is listed. If it’s not there at all, that’s a strong sign the SSD has failed or disconnected.

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

157,296 points

Jun 10, 2025 11:44 AM in response to nivaldo64

It would really help us, to help you, if you can tell us which exact model your MacBook Air is.

Based on what you provided, it sounds like the laptop's internal drive is either not partitioned properly or that it has failed.

At this point, I would suggest that you boot up your Mac in Recovery Mode, and then, use Disk Utility to verify the drive's integrity, and if no errors are found, to recreate a single partition so that you can then attempt to reinstall OS X El Capitan again.

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Answer 3

nivaldo64 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 10, 2025 12:26 PM in response to Tesserax

Hi TesseraX, I'm honestly not sure what the model is.

From the label below the device shows MacBook Air model a1465.

It's an old MacBook Air from and I think is from early 2012.

The only option available on the Disk Utility is the doctor icon called "Repair". And when I click on shows the only disk available is called "Apple Disk Image Media"

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Answer 4

nivaldo64 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 11, 2025 09:54 AM in response to Tesserax

Thank you very much for your help, Tesserax.

I managed to reset both the SMC and NVRAM. In fact, after the NVRAM reset, the language of the recovery menu changed, which was something I was looking for. When I press Command + R, I see the globe icon along with the loading bar, so I believe that means I'm downloading the recovery partition.

However, under the Disk Utility menu, I'm still unable to see any other partitions or disks. I opened the device to check if the SSD was disconnected or if there were any signs of damage, but I couldn't identify anything unusual.

I was wondering if I would be able to install or identify an external drive in Disk Utility, just as a test, to determine if my SSD is permanently dead or not.

Please let me know what you think.

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My Mackbook Air after the bot sound shows a flasing the folder with a question mark

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