Not enough room?

[cheddar-caveman]

Please bear with me, at 85 I'm slightly out of date with the latest OSs!
I've been trying to update my OS, not by much, just from Catalina to Big Sur but just get the error message "not enough room".
I have 30Gb free on the HD and Big Sur is about 12Gb so why the error?
Do you have to remove to old OS first or format the HD before going up in the world?

Is there a better OS that I should look at that isn't so big? Should I go directly to the latest update whatever that is?

 

[Fishrrman]

It seems that in recent times, the amount of "free space" required to do an OS install has grown by leaps and bounds.

I didn't use either Catalina or Big Sur.
But I think that between them, Apple may have changed some of its drive partitioning, etc.
What this means is that the Installer needs LOTS of room to re-arrange things as it does its job.

Could you tell us
Which Mac you have
What year it was made
What kind of drive is inside
How large is the drive (total)

Also, do you keep a backup drive?
What app did you use to create/maintain it?

Finally, tough question: do you REALLY need to "upgrade"?

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Thanks for the help Fishrrman.
MacBook Pro 15" 2018
250Gb solid state (I think).
I have backed it up yesterday onto an external 1Tb HD using the built in Time Machine.

 

[Fishrrman]

OK,
IF it's backed up, and
IF you really, really want to upgrade,
You could do this:

Do you have the Big Sur installer downloaded, and in your applications folder?
You could make a bootable USB flashdrive installer.
You will need
1. A USB flash drive that is 16gb or larger
and
2. "Install Disk Creator", which you can get here:

Make a Bootable USB macOS Installer Download the update for Big Sur compatibility -

What’s needed for a clean install on a Mac A backup of the disk before it’s erased. Two options are to use Duplicate (a free utility which can copy and paste an entire bootable volume), or Mac Backup Guru (a paid, fully featured backup utility with unique incremental backups capability) for...

macdaddy.io

(Click "download the mac OS app)
3. Use Install Disk Creator to make the bootable flash drive (simple steps)
4. Boot from the flash drive installer (hold down the OPTION key and bootup and KEEP HOLDING IT DOWN until the startup manager appears, then select the flash drive and hit return).

If you can get this far, it's possible to:
1. Erase the internal drive COMPLETELY
2. Install a fresh copy of Big Sur
3. Restore your data from the TM backup

I can post step by step on how to do that, but FIRST try creating the bootable installer and do a "test boot" to see if it works.

Then, get back to us.

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Many thanks. Let me think whether as you say, I really, really need to do this🤔🤔

 

[zevrix]

I have 30Gb free on the HD

In my opinion, 30 GB of free space is simply not enough these days. You will keep running into all kind of issues - from the one you're experiencing to inferior performance of your system and various apps. If you ask me, you need to aim for about 100 GB free space at any time.

If you can, get an external drive and move all (or most) of your non-system files there.

That's, again, just my opinion.

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Thanks zevrix. I think I've got a dead end computer, not designed to be updated, con't add memory (I think). Just have to leave it where it is and aim for a better one later on (if I win the lottery)!

 

[Basic75]

1. Erase the internal drive COMPLETELY

Please DO NOT DO THIS BEFORE YOU BACK UP TO A SECOND EXTERNAL DRIVE, otherwise you'll have a single point of failure for total data loss between erasing the computer's drive and restoring the backup.

 

[McScooby]

If it’s a 2018 it’ll take the latest MacOS Ventura no probs, why stop at Big Sur?

 

[cheddar-caveman]

If it’s a 2018 it’ll take the latest MacOS Ventura no probs, why stop at Big Sur?

Is that a fact! So I can just follow the "update now" command?
Will that automatically remove the existing OS?

 

[Basic75]

Will that automatically remove the existing OS?

I'd use the word "replace".

 

[cheddar-caveman]

OK,
IF it's backed up, and
IF you really, really want to upgrade,
You could do this:

Do you have the Big Sur installer downloaded, and in your applications folder?
You could make a bootable USB flashdrive installer.
You will need
1. A USB flash drive that is 16gb or larger
and
2. "Install Disk Creator", which you can get here:

Make a Bootable USB macOS Installer Download the update for Big Sur compatibility -

What’s needed for a clean install on a Mac A backup of the disk before it’s erased. Two options are to use Duplicate (a free utility which can copy and paste an entire bootable volume), or Mac Backup Guru (a paid, fully featured backup utility with unique incremental backups capability) for...

macdaddy.io

(Click "download the mac OS app)
3. Use Install Disk Creator to make the bootable flash drive (simple steps)
4. Boot from the flash drive installer (hold down the OPTION key and bootup and KEEP HOLDING IT DOWN until the startup manager appears, then select the flash drive and hit return).

If you can get this far, it's possible to:
1. Erase the internal drive COMPLETELY
2. Install a fresh copy of Big Sur
3. Restore your data from the TM backup

I can post step by step on how to do that, but FIRST try creating the bootable installer and do a "test boot" to see if it works.

Then, get back to us.

I'm going to see if McScooby's idea of going up to the latest Ventura if it's a reliable, stable version so thanks for your suggestions.

 

[cheddar-caveman]

Hi folks.

Just to let you know, updated to Monterey and everything good! Now also updated my photo processing software so very happy.