Running out of space on 32 GB SSD Inspiron 3050

Well this was refurb. and whoever imaged drive didn't use Compact feature for a small drive. I enabled it and it freed up about 1.5 gb more. Was at 10 Gb free at that point with nothing installed. Still very surprised a native Windows 10 takes up that much room. Might try Windows 10 image tool and do a clean install as you recommend. See how much that takes up. I see even Ubuntu 16.04 takes around 25 GB which doesn't leave much for files.

Wish it were that easy, this bios not like most current Dell laptops. My 5559 had this option, this bios does not. Can't even manually add boot options to it. Looks to be very much a simplistic bios. Much more like a legacy bios setup than modern one.

OK, think I finally figured out this bios. Disable secure boot, enable legacy and then boot via F12 and now I see option for USB boot from Legacy or UEFI. So wiping ssd and installing clean Windows 10 from creation tool. Will see if that improves space on SSD. Can't get more clean than that. If I still can't get at least 10 gb available It's no good to me. The clean install should automatically use Compact tool to compress Windows 10 on the small drive.

So downloaded Media Creation Tool from Microsoft. Created USB drive image of Windows 10 64. Then tried to boot to USB drive via F12 boot options. Too my surprise no option in Bios to boot to USB drive??

Only to NIC Ipv4 or ipv6? Went to bios disabled secure boot, nope still no USB boot option. How is it, a bios today cannot boot to a USB device? Well, I have exhausted all options I care too on this 3050 Dell so back for refund I guess.  I did check for Bios updates and installed current from A06 I believe it was.

OK so far so good. Clean install has me at 19gb on 29 gb ssd free. Obviously will go down a bit after updates. But much better than the 9 gb free with Dell image. I was hoping for 15 gb which is doable for what I plan for this device, so thanks Jesse L!  

Maybe you should invest in a larger m.2 SSD if you need more space than 32-GB....just a thought...

Just to add, after Windows went through updates which of course adds also a few games, some unwanted apps and stuff. I went from 18 Gb free to 10 which is so incredible and wouldn't be a issue except for only having 29 gb to work with. Even being very frugal and uninstalling anything not needed. After several cycles of updates your going to be very close to maxing out the drive space. Given the limited expansion possibilities this isn't great for a Windows OS. It's a cloud OS device with a browser or two and store everything else in the cloud.  

That's a possibility if I can find any M2 SSD's that actually are guaranteed to work. Crucial doesn't seem to offer any by application for 3050. A Google search brings up a lot of users wanting to do the same but none have solid recommendations.

The specs say the stock SSD is an m.2 SATA drive, 3 Gbps, and the motherboard has a NGF_SSD (next generation form SSD) slot.

Beyond that I can't help...

Yes, from what I found its a Sata 3 M.2 2242 (22mm x42mm) card most of the time. However I did read some did use a 2.5 SSD in some production sequence. I did find a 64 Gb Transcend for $35 on Amazon and Newegg has one for $60 that is 128. Is some question about capacity some say 128 Gb max others have 256 Gb with no problem.

I think clearly the chipset determines capacity of RAM and as far as storage if it's a compatible storage device I don't see that capacity would matter. I've ordered a 64 bit SSD that should work fine, I don't plan to store a lot of files on the Dell but would rather have more available space for larger Windows 10 updates than a 32 Gb drive allows. Too often you have to use external drive to aid in those updates with a 32 gb drive. I would have bought a bigger drive had it been available. Actually for what I paid and the upgrades I made Ram to 8 gb from 2 gb and SSD upgrade. I still feel the Inspiron 3050 is a nice buy.

Glad you found a bigger SSD.  Sounds like 64 GB will work fine for your purposes.

Yes, chipsets make a difference, and times change too. In "olden days", you couldn't use a large HDD because the hardware and Windows couldn't manage that much storage space. You had to partition the drive into smaller logical drives with different drive letters in order to use all the HDD space.  

8 GB RAM modules may not have been available when her system was first manufactured, so 4x 4 GB was probably the max Dell tested and certified 16 GB as max RAM.

Now that 8 GB modules are available at reasonable prices, 32 GB might be possible, but Dell hasn't tested that much RAM in her system. So if it doesn't work correctly / reliably, Dell isn't responsible...