Macbook Air Issue

I had an issue with a Macbook Air where it was not starting up properly and displaying a message of:

"MacOS could not be installed on your computer

 Storage system verify or repair failed.

Quit the installer to restart your computer and try again."

It would boot into this error and would not come out of it if restarted,  and trying some of the many suggestions on how to fix it:

• Use disk utilities and First Aid on the drive and reboot to get it working.
• Booting into recovery mode by holding Command & R, and trying the same thing as above with the disk utility.
• Free up space on your drive for the update.
• Downloading the update and installing it manually.

The only way around it was to go into Safe boot, (by holding the Shift key when the OS starts) which is what I did to try the manual update. I could back up all the files with this method so that was good.

I found the solution on a youtube video, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXcUWg4199Q)
which suggested moving your mouse to the top of the restart button, click on it but not let go and move the mouse. A toolbar will appear at the top of the window, with the option to start up your disk, and you can choose to start up the OS and skip the error issue. This fixes the problem.

But there was a continuing issue with the macbook, that only a clean installation could fix.

So following the instructions on another website.
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/clean-install-macos-3637409/

On this website, I found instructions on how to get a copy of the install onto the USB drive.

To complete this task you will need a USB with 16GB (Toshiba) on it. They are pretty cheap now and I picked up a 16GB usb drive for $10.99 at the warehouse stationery. I however went one larger and got a 32GB drive (Toshiba) for $17.99 as well... just to be on the safe side. I also needed the older macOS system (High Sierra) to complete these tasks.

1. Insert the USB into the mac and opened the "Disk Utility".
2. From here I chose the USB that is on the left of the screen and clicked on the "Erase" option.
3. I chose to label it the same as the websites suggestion "Untitled" and formatted it as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" (Can use APFS as well) and clicked erase.

After the drive is erased, we start with creating the boot disk:

1. With the usb still connected, open up the terminal window ( Look in the utilities folder or search for it).
2. Copy and paste the command into the terminal window, so it can process the usb drive and install Mojave Installer on to it.
   
   sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled -- /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app
3. If it asks for a password, do it. This took a long time for it to copy over the installer, but when its finished, it should mention in the window that is done or completed the task.

I then had to change to another website to figure out how to do a clean install as the instructions weren't so clear after creating the USB install drive.

http://osxdaily.com/2018/10/03/how-clean-install-macos-mojave/

So to continue after the USB install of Mojave had been created, I continued from the step 2 of the sub-topic How to clean install MacOS Mojave:

1. Connect the USB to a port on the mac.
2. Reboot the Mac and hold the Option Key on the keyboard.
3. on "macOS Utilities" screen select "Disk Utility"
4. In the utility, choose the "Macintosh HD" and hit the "Erase" button.
5. Once it has erased, click on the MacHD and format it using "Extended" or "APFS" format.
6. When finished, quit out of the Disk Util app and you'll be sent back to the 'MacOS Util" main screen.
7. From here click on "Install macOS" option and continue through the wizard till you have to choose a drive to install it to and choose "Macintosh HD" to install to.
8. Continue until your finished.

It can take a while to reinstall, but once its done, you can start filling in the new user wizard and get your mac up and going again.