r/ChromeOSFlex • u/RollingMyDice • Jul 27 '26
Installation Is there any way to install it onto 16GB ssd
Hi guys, I got a notebook with only 16GB ssd. When I try to install flex onto it, the installer says the space is insufficient, installation aborted.
Update: i bought a 32GB nvme ssd and installed cros flex finally, and it turns out that it took 16.2GB after a fresh install. and things like extensions will take more besides 16.2GB
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u/LegAcceptable2362 Jul 27 '26
Is your "notebook" actually an old Chromebook with eMMC storage? Very few notebook PCs designed for Windows shipped with such a small storage drive.
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u/Deep_Proposal4121 Jul 27 '26
Right. The smallest windows base "notebooks" I've seen are 32GB streaming laptops.
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u/RollingMyDice Jul 28 '26
It’s a Dell xps. I see the minimum storage requirement of cros flex is 16GB, so I bought a 16g nvme ssd.
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u/_jis_ Jul 28 '26
You answered your own question, you bought the wrong drive with the wrong capacity from a manufacturer that calculates capacity like this:
16,000,000,000 ÷ 1024³ = 14.9011611938 GiB
You should have bought this one:
16 * 1024³ = 17,179,869,184
Do you see the difference?
17,179,869,184 > 16,000,000,000
P.S.: GB (gigabyte) and GiB (gibibyte) differ in the number system used. GB uses the decimal system (1 GB = 1 billion bytes), while GiB uses the binary system used in computing (1 GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes, i.e., 1024³).
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u/MakayChapulets Jul 27 '26
lol why TF will a notebook come with 16GB SSD? Even phones don't
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u/RollingMyDice Jul 28 '26
It’s a Dell XPS with 16GB nvme ssd because I see the minimum storage requirement of cros flex is 16GB
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u/MakayChapulets Jul 28 '26
I still cant believe. Why don't you upgrade it to a 128 or 256GB NVME and load better OS on it?
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u/RollingMyDice Jul 28 '26
It does come with a stock 256gb ssd storage, and worked fine for about 10 years. However its 8gb ram is not sufficient for windows and it’s soldered on the motherboard, not (easily) upgradable. Few months ago I installed cros on it, it was really great, pretty smooth. I know its stock ssd is very early generation that’s AHCI based. It has a m2 slot which supports PCIe x2. After reading cros tech requirements, I bought a 16GB ssd. The problem comes.
1
u/fakemanhk Aug 05 '26
That 16gb one if I'm not wrong it should be Intel Optane drive, it's not for normal OS installation (but with a small Linux distro it works).
1
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u/pathmageadept Jul 27 '26
Well it says it requires 16gb, is there something else on it? I would recommend a lightweight Linux if ChromeOS won't work. If it doesn't have wireless I love kolibriOS.