Hello, I have a 2014 MacBook Pro, BIg Sur 11.7.10. I have 29.5GB of memory left. Is that enought to upgrade to Dorico 6? I’m not sure my computer can handle it.
Joan
Dorico and its content will take up to 25 GB from your hard drive. Given the requirements of Mac and its operating system, it’s advisable to copy away to an external hard drive so much data that after Dorico installation you’d have at least 20 GB free, but preferably 40 GB or more for the RAM memory swap etc. to work well and for the Mac to “breathe”.
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I would suggest that 30 Gb is at the absolute bare minimum of free space – generally, just for using the Mac; and ideally you should be looking to increase that, regardless of any new installation.
Have a look at the Storage Settings in System Setting > General, and see if there’s anything you can archive to an external drive or elsewhere (remembering that you need copies on more than one physical drive to ensure that drive failure won’t cost you any data.)
You can also use an app like OmniDiskSweeper, which will sort your disk’s folders by size, so that you can see where all the big stuff is.
If you already have Dorico 5, then a lot of content will already be on your disk, but Dorico 6 comes with a new piano library, as well as Marching Percussion, so that will take up more space.
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I do have Dorico 5 Pro. I don’t have enough available GB. If I try to install Dorico 6, will it crash my computer? Or will it just say “You don’t have enough room”? I really should just get a new computer, but that seems daunting to me…. so much time spent doing that.
Should have a 512GB Mac for any type of creative work, and yes… Move all of the sound content to external storage. Once you do that, Dorico only takes like 1-2GB on your system drive.
Same guidance for macOS and Windows 11.
If you don’t have enough space, then you need to install Large Libraries and move them to external storage in between installations (using Library Manager).
You can also set external storage as the download location, so you don’t run into issues downloading and copying/installing stuff over.
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Your computer may start to complain about running out of space anyway, with such a small amount of free disk.
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Yes - it does complain. Especially if I’m looking at two Dorico files and mixers at the same time. I guess I just have to bite the bullet and buy a new computer. 
As said, in the short term, you may be able to find something that you can delete or move to another drive.
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I’m wanting to move up from Pro 5 to Pro 6, and your answer brought this question to mind. When installing Pro 6, do I have a choice as to what audio libraries to install? I really don’t have a use for Marching Percussion.
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Yes, – you can select what to install in the Steinberg Download Assistant. Dorico will work perfectly well without the HALion player and all its associated libraries, if you really want.
It may throw up a warning message that content is missing, but you can click “Don’t show again”.
Obviously, the default playback template is for HALion libraries, so you’ll need to set the default to Silence, or Noteperformer, or your own templates for other libraries.
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Marching Percussin is very small, and I don’t know about other people, but my newly installed Dorico 6 will simply not run without it. I had to install MP to get it to work at all. Clicking the ‘Don’t Show Again’ button solved nothing.
I did install Etudes, because the piano sound on NotePerformer (which I use for everything else) is very inadequate, and Etudes was huge. But the real biggie is Halion Symphnonic Libraries, which you don’t need if you’re going to use NP. (And which I did not install, with no bad side effects.) As Benwiggy said, you can always default to ‘silence,’ in which case you don’t need any sound libraries at all.
And the short answer (Finally!) to your original questions is ‘Yes,’ you do have a choice as to what audio libraries to install.
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