Mavericks to El Capitan HDD space question

[spankyb11]

I just have a question that I want to ask you guys. This isn't a "should I upgrade" thread...there are a million of those.

Simply put, when you upgrade from one OSX to another it says something like "must have 6 gb of free HDD space."

Is that 6 gb used by the install file and regained once the new OSX is installed and the file is deleted? Or does that mean that the new OSX is actually 6 gb larger than the previous OSX.

Specifically, I am talking about moving from Mavericks to El Capitan. I have an install file for El Captian and I noticed it is about the same size as the amount of space recommended. I also know that once the software is installed you don't need to keep the install file.

Thanks

 

[Weaselboy]

Is that 6 gb used by the install file and regained once the new OSX is installed and the file is deleted?

This right here.... it just uses that space for moving things around during the install then the space is released. You will end up with about the same amount of free space when it is all done. Often people will see even slightly more free space after and OS upgrade because the upgrade wipes off a lot of cache files that get rebuilt in the days following the update.