rjbuffchix: This may sound like a dumb or newbie question but can anyone clarify how the amount of hard drive space used works in the update process? In other words, it seems Windows 11 requires a certain amount of free space, but what happens to 10? Does it "disappear" such that 11 can use the space it was occupying? What happens if there is not enough space but it wants to automatically update to 11?
pds41: Speculating as I didn't bother to look when mine upgraded. I'd expect it to be functionally the same as a feature update for Windows 10 - I believe these downloaded what was needed and then cleaned up after themselves. If you don't have enough space free to download the update, it won't update.
Yep, all updates since the first Windows10 upgrade basically work the same way.
First it installs the new OS into a temporary directory. If all was ok, then the new installation replaces the old one.
When I upgraded from 8 to 10, there was a backup directory for a rollback. This time I could not find a backup directory.
Instead of the auto-updater you can download the install files via Media Creation Tool either directly to a USB stick or to a ISO which you can mount or burn. This way you can avoid wasting another 4GB of space in your temp folder or wherever the online updater puts the stuff.
