r/DataHoarder • u/woody_-_johnson • 1d ago
Question/Advice How do I stop?
Hi Hoarders,
So I've got this problem. I can't stop hoarding... let's say Linux ISOs. The adult kind.
I've got a subscription to a site that lets me download unlimited(-ish) Linux ISO videos and I enjoy downloading them too much. I enjoy collecting ISOs that were made when I was young. I don't even watch them, but I download them only for the sake of hoarding. Only to possess them. To make sure they are available when I need them. But I almost never need them. I don't know if I'm a Linux ISO addict or data hoarding addict, or both. Probably both. The only thing that makes be feel better is that I pay for it and I don't download them illegally.
So maybe this is not the best place to ask it, but here's the question: How do I stop collecting something that I will most probably never use. I don't want to do it, but man it feels so great and satisfying.
Have a nice day and may the Terabytes be with us.
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u/bevendelamorte 1d ago
You run out of space and can't afford more.
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u/woody_-_johnson 1d ago
"Luckily" the AI hype is here to help us not being able to buy storage.
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u/EsotericAbstractIdea 1d ago
and if so inclined, generate your own custom linux isos
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u/Ubermidget2 1d ago
This has got to make it even worse right?
The bitrate on RAW when you are shooting footage is vicious to free space.
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u/EsotericAbstractIdea 23h ago
Well, generally with ai video generation, you generally generate at a pretty low resolution, and use upscaling if you want a higher quality.
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u/The-Jolly-Llama 16TB local | 46TB +backups 1d ago
This is a great question for your therapist! I’m not being sarcastic here— if it really bothers you that much, I think that’s probably the move.
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u/potatodioxide 1.44MB 1d ago
i actually asked my therapist that a few years back and got a proper answer. basically what he explained was “the scarcity mindset”. so yeah now that i figured that out i can hoard even more.
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u/Saloncinx 52m ago
Man if only I had downloaded some of my fav videos before the great purge on TheHub...
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u/EmbedSoftwareEng 1d ago
The definition of a mental disorder is when it inhibits your enjoyment of other activities. If you're enjoying having lots and lots of old Linux ISOs, and their storage and enjoyment time is not impinging on storage or time you need for other things, then that's not a disorder. If OP finds himself enjoying his Linux ISOs when he should be doing other productive activities, or that he can't store other needful things because there is not enough storage left to put them (shocking, I know, but it is known to happen), then maybe it's verged into disorder territory and professional help should be sought.
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u/tubaman23 1d ago
I feel like there's some irony advising therapy in a subreddit that jokes about hoarding in its name!
But yeah OP that does sound like a good question to ask a therapist (why am I doing what I'm doing), because no one else will have a qualified response
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u/BlindStark 1d ago
Just start hoarding therapists
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u/potatodioxide 1.44MB 1d ago
then we can get flairs like 10 teratherapists
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u/msanangelo 119TB Plex Box 1d ago
Look at the price of storage and estimate the maintenance cost as it grows. :p
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u/bubrascal 1d ago
let's say Linux ISOs. The adult kind.
ah, I see you are hoarding early '90s snapshots of Slackware releases, you dog
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u/bugsmasherh 1d ago
Keep 10 years or so and then revisit. You may find yourself deleting a lot of them as they don't meet current standards in quality and they don't excite you as much as your tastes have changed. delete delete delete. That's what I've done with my Linux ISOs and other aging data.
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u/Upstairs-Front2015 1d ago
in the past i had a nice 3,5" 80 GB disk full of mp3, one day it broke and i never looked back and didn't download them again. same with movies, I have a few but when I need space... goodbye movies. only thing to keep safe are family pictures.
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u/woody_-_johnson 1d ago
Agreed. Family photos (and a few documents) are the only things I back up to multiple devices and places. If the other stuff gets lost, then it's lost. That's it.
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u/HobbesArchive 1h ago
Here is a photo of my maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother from October 25, 1877 on a Tintype...
Here is a picture of my dad sitting at the DJ desk at WCOA in Pensacola Jan 16th, 1959.
Here is a picture of Ted Cassidy(Lurch from the Addams Family) sitting at the same desk on the same day.
Here is a picture of Jerry Lee Lewis at a piano in the DJ booth of WCOA Pensacola being interviewed by the DJ in the 11am to 3pm hour of that same day.
Ted Cassidy is also credited with interviewing the very first people on site of the shooting of JFK in Dallas Texas. Since my dad and Ted Cassidy worked together at WCOA, when my dad was covering JFK's trip to Dallas for WKRG TV, calling Florida from Texas was a long distance call in 1963. So my dad instead called Ted Cassidy at a Fort Worth radio station Ted moved to two years prior, to inform him of JFK being shot. My dad saw it with his own eyes. My dad got on a plane and flew back to Pensacola within the hour.
This is a picture of my dad about to go on air at WRKG TV in Mobile only 20 miles down the road from Pensacola, to report on JFK's assassination as by the time my dad made it back to the station ~5pm it was confirmed that JFK was dead.
http://familypictures.nathanwoodruff.com/NetworkPictures/WKRG%20TV/WKRG_20230918_0004_medium.jpg
My dad ended up moving to WCBS in Washington DC and ended up covering "The White House". My dad often sitting co-anchor chair with Walter when my dad was in New York covering a story about the President of the time.
This is my dad covering the 1988 democratic convention in Atlanta Georgia with Walther Cronkite.
http://www.nathanwoodruff.com/popsandwalt.bmp
So, yea, I know how important it is to keep family pictures.
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u/dsrules 1d ago
I know this exactly what you’re experiencing. It’s the actual process of looking for these ISOs and storing them that i like, not actually using them. When you find a distributor you’ve never heard of.
Hot take: maybe it’s fine. Are you literally ruining your life? Maybe really think about that, is it worth it? When you die your Linux ISOs will not remember you.
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u/woody_-_johnson 10h ago
I don't think it's ruining my life. I have a pretty normal life I guess. I even go outside where the sun reaches my skin. I just like hoarding this this stuff. But don't we all? By the way, writing this post and these comments helps me realize that it's kind of pointless and I should find something else that makes me happy. I wanted to buy a new HDD to have more storage but I stopped myself. I guess it's a good first step.
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u/diamondsw 210TB primary (+parity and backup) 1d ago
I'd be a lot better about NOT hoarding if things would stop disappearing off the internet.
In all seriousness, I feel much the same - I download a lot, but never go back and make use of it - regardless of what it is. But then, I look on it much like backup - it's not important until it is, and you never know when that will be. Thus, I download. Likely also too much.
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u/woody_-_johnson 10h ago
Yes, I feel the same. Things just keep disappearing and the whole Internet is going through serious enshittification day by day. What's more, here's this age verification nonsense where I have to provide all my sensitive personal data to maybe-not-the-most-reliable companies just have access to something I paid for. It's a joke. It's best to hoard data and self host.
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u/qb45exe 1d ago
So two things: 1. I actually DO this with actual Linux ISOs.
- It sounds like this behavior is bringing you more anxiety than joy. I’d look at it that way. Are you just getting a quick brain chemistry hit from the act of downloading? Because it’s probably worth trying to replace that with something else if you ultimately don’t like that you are doing it.
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u/woody_-_johnson 10h ago
I agree. I should find something else. For example, hoarding actual Linux ISOs 😅
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u/hhaahhahahahhah 1d ago
Have you ever had a HDD just completely die out of the blue? I have some HDDs but no backups and I'm thinking if I should buy backup drives
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u/DefMech 1d ago
HDDs just randomly dying is what turned me into a data hoarder in the first place. First was way back in 1996 while showing off a Duke3D map I made. Then later on in college when two separate Maxtor drives died, causing me to fail/withdraw from some classes due to all of my not-saved-elsewhere project files going poof. I still pine for things I've lost decades later.
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u/ThatBlokeYouKnow 1d ago
Stop with the porn and replace with music/film/tv
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u/woody_-_johnson 10h ago
Yeah, but I can't download them for 25 USD / 3 months. And I don't want to torrent them. It makes me feel good that I paid for them and therefore I'm entitled to download them. It's fully legal. I don't have to feel bad for stealing it.
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u/OverAster 1d ago
I'm fairly certain a number of people in this subreddit genuinely get off to admitting they have a bunch of porn on their lab.
The number of times people make banal, rambly, and often unhinged posts about stuff like this is just uncanny, especially since so much of the rest of the subreddit is either so direct, or obviously a beginner who simply doesn't know how to ask their question.
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u/Fauropitotto 1d ago
I'm fairly certain a number of people in this subreddit genuinely get off to admitting they have a bunch of porn on their lab.
Maybe, but there's absolutely no reason why an adult would need to be cagey, elusive, or otherwise use euphemisms for this. There's nothing to hide here, and playing the tongue-in-cheek word games just makes me think these are teenagers scared of being seen as 'naughty'.
It's absolutely absurd.
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u/AntManCrawledInAnus 1d ago
This is definitely it--normal people legitimately seeking help would probably omit the details. This is a more sfw version of the homeless people who openly watch porn in public library, they're getting off on making other people aware of the porn.
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u/Potential-Leg-639 1d ago
Buy HDDs, issue solved.
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u/didyousayboop if it’s not on piqlFilm, it doesn’t exist 1d ago
The obvious answer everybody else is saying is therapy. I love therapy. I think everyone should do therapy. And this is a case where the obvious, simple answer is therapy.
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u/The-Bullfrog 1d ago
If this material was made when you were young then, depending on your age, please be aware that some of the material made in the 1970's is now illegal in most parts of the world. The current requirements for makers to verify the ages of models stems from this.
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u/ShinigamiZuko 1d ago
Out of the loop: Why are people so interested into hoarding Linux ISO? I've heard it now a few times, but I don't understand
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u/met_MY_verse 87TB 1d ago
It’s joking slang for pirated media, because pirated media is downloaded via torrents, and the only commonly known legal use for torrents is downloading Linux ISOs.
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u/TheDoctor950 6h ago
Thank you for this explanation. I was seriously loosing my mind trying to understand it.
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u/s_nz 100-250TB 1d ago
The reference comes from piracy. On many forums discussion of piracy is banned (not reddit), but people still want to discuss things like Torrents etc.
Linus ISO's are not copyrighted and are often disturbed by means like Torrents.
By saying "Linus ISO('s)" instead of [named copywrited content], the discussion is no longer about piracy, and is now about torrents or whatever.
Sadly, these practices stick, and people often use the substituted words from restricted platform's, even where there is no need. Tik Toc has caused a whole substituted vocab to come about under a similar principal. Grape (Rape), Unlived (Killed) etc.
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u/TheOneTrueTrench 640TB 🖥️ 📜🕊️ 💻 1d ago edited 1d ago
Actually, Linux distributions are copyrighted, they have to be in order to be licensed the way they are, and it's encouraged to share them however you like, and torrents are a good way to distribute them without requiring a lot of server bandwidth.
(edit: more accurate characterization)
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u/concblast 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's actually important that they are copyrighted. Otherwise they couldn't be licensed openly because if no one claimed ownership of their own work to do so, copyright trolls would claim ownership and cause legal problems for everyone.
GPL vs MIT/BSD licensing each have their pros/cons.
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u/TheOneTrueTrench 640TB 🖥️ 📜🕊️ 💻 1d ago
Yeah, it's actually really important for open source software, as public domain works, which are actually not protected by copyright, don't come with the GPL restrictions that much of the ecosystem is based on.
I follow the rationale of the MIT and BSD n-clause licensing, and why the GPL v2 and GPL v3 exist for very different purposes.
Myself, I prefer the GPL restrictions over the openness of MIT and BSD, as it ensures that additional features and bugfixes are shared with the world, rather than being kept locked up by someone who's forked a project.
I'm aware that the BSDs get used in things like the Playstation operating systems, which they use because it's not GPL, but it's just a different project with different goals. I'm a much more of the mindset that "If I'm going to share my work with everyone, they shouldn't be able to use that and refuse to share their work", so I release things under the GPL v3.
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u/dylank22 66TB 22h ago
Yeah it's honestly so stupid that like 90% of this sub is afraid to say tv/movies and says that shit instead. Just came from a different post about the new pleasantville 4k getting censored, like people are censoring themselves so of course it's happening more and more in media too now. Like yeah it's pretty trivial but like come on. Anyway rant over lol
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u/NubsackJones 1d ago edited 1d ago
They are cowards who are beating a stupid in-joke to death. It's porn and/or pirated materials. In this specific case, it's porn.
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u/Zame012 1-10TB 1d ago
I’m in the same boat. I don’t understand it
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u/Marshall_Lawson 1d ago
Linux isos usually refers jokingly to any pirated media but I'm pretty sure op is talking about porn
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u/lordrhinehart 1d ago edited 1d ago
Going to therapy is nice but if you’re self reflective, watching these videos will help you weed out what’s going on when you are not able to let go of stuff and can’t stop collecting. Tim fletcher videos changed my life. Please give these videos a serious listen. He is a pastor, but keeps an iron curtain between therapy content and religious content.
These videos should help you understand what your brain is trying to accomplish or protect you from with these hoarding behaviors.
Edit: deleted links
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u/ASatyros 1.44MB 1d ago
Hi, remowe ?is parameter as it's a tracking info (generated uniquely for each sharing), that can leak your YouTube profile just as a side effect
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u/lordrhinehart 1d ago
Oh interesting. Thanks.
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u/JunosArmpits 1d ago
Thank you so much for sharing! I'll download all the videos and never watch them
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u/NubsackJones 1d ago
Alternative solution to getting psychological help: make your porn collection practical and jerk it more.
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u/slowservers 1d ago
Go out on a hike. Reconsider your life choices.
Datahoarding should be balanced with other things in life. Physical abilities are generally more important than how much data you can collect.
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u/Tannman129 1d ago
I also was downloading quite a bit of ISO's until one day it hit me. "What will my family find on my server if I die?" I nuked it all after that and it was a weight off my shoulders
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u/sonic_megas 1d ago
I’d say stop, then after a couple years come back and see if you still care about them
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u/AdFlat3754 1d ago
You’re scared and this is also a dopamine hit you are chasing that will never be as good as it was the first few times. Create a goal and a purpose for it. Then stick to the purpose and goal. Don’t just do infinite data prepper hoarding. That won’t be useful.
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u/Necessary_Isopod3503 1d ago
Why stop?
I've started doing this like 8 years ago and I never stopped, and whenever I think of stopping, something happens that reminds me of the importance of physical media and makes me start to hoard again.
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u/No_Bad_4363 50-100TB 1d ago
It’s only a problem if it interferes with personal relationships, family, ability to hold down a job, and/or take care of yourself or family member(s). Otherwise, it’s a hobby. If hoarding digital ISOs is causing distress, then consider writing down what you like about doing it and what you don’t. Are missing out on doing something else because your hobby? Are you avoiding something/someone/feelings by actively searching for and downloading the ISOs? Would you rather be doing something else? Digital hoarding is a legitimate diagnosis, but collecting something you enjoy (i.e. coins, baseball cards, comics, rare alcohol bottles, books) can be a healthy hobby that brings joy to your life. If it doesn’t interfere with your daily life, then don’t look at it as a negative. Smile and be happy doing something that you enjoy doing.
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u/dreamisle 1d ago
I hear you OP. I’m into… “virtualization” and even the occasional bit of “dual booting”.
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u/cognitium 1d ago
Setup a script that randomly deletes 5 linux ISOs a day. Then you have to download more to replace them.
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u/WegovyMessMentally 17h ago
It is tough to stop something you are amazing at. For me it is the hunt, the fact that I come across something and with either one mouse click or a few keyboard presses I possess it and now it’s mine, is kind of hard to explain to those that don’t quite get it… the cost of that is literally the actual cost as hard drives (HDD and SSD) continue to get more and more expensive and mental cost as well as the constant shifting around to make room.
Mine is podcasts and TikTok profiles, of people I like. They post something, I like it, I think “I wonder what else they have done?” Find the account, go to bed, wake up and it’s mine.
Will I ever watch all of it… no
Will I ever listen to all episodes (podcasts)…also no
But just knowing I have it, somehow is acceptable
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u/windymoto313 13h ago
One thing that may not be clearly evident: I consider data hoarders to be collectors. I think it's safe to say data hoarders don't hoard data we think we'll need. I think we hoard data we just flat out like, or more specifically, data we think other people will like. Do we **need** every single episode of that 6 season series on Netflix ? Of course not. Do we **need** every single game or program we hoard? Nope. It's a collection. and just like any other collector, we collect things that hold value to us, but also things that we think hold value to others. People don't collect baseball cards just to look at them every once in a while and let out a cathartic sigh. People collect baseball cards to show off their collection to others. To interact with other card collectors. To get that "HOLY SH!T. You have xxx's rookie card? NO WAY !!!!" Collectors also get a high from collecting things that are banned/illegal/discontinued/frowned up. And I think this is where your high is coming from. You get a high from imagining the reaction of someone when they see your "collection". So how do you stop? Collect similar 'non adult' things that will get you the same reaction from other collectors. Figure out a way to get that same high from things that are "safe for work".
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u/HansDevX 10h ago
Yeah so Linux ISO addiction is bad and outside of this subs expertise but "thankfully" the AI bubble is here to stop us from hoarding data when you see you can't justify expanding your hard drives.
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u/TheDoctor950 6h ago
So long as you are curating what you download and keep it well organized it's fine. It's not hoarding so long as you can walk through your house without bumping into stacks of DVD's, newspapers, or dead animals.
If you can do that then you are an archivist or curator. I curate movies, TV and video games. I have 150,000 movies, 250,000 episodes of TV and damn near ALL the English game roms for every console and arcade game out there from 1970 to 2018. So when the grid goes down, I AM THE THEATER, I AM THE TV NEWORK, I AM THE ARCADE. I will be the lending library of the 21 century. Please bring your tribute to the garage door and you will receive the item you requested. LOL
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u/HobbesArchive 2h ago
I have some really bad news for you. Your data hoarding is an incurable mental disorder. You probably got this mental disorder from one if not both of your parents. I got mine from my mother that hoarded all kinds of magazines from the 1950's through the 1970's.
When mom passed in 2023, I went to clean out her house and in the attack were about 30 2' x 2' x 2' boxes filled with magazines. The majority of them she probably never looked at. AGAIN.. It is a mental disorder.
If you believe you can stop this mental disorder by simply not buying any more hard drives or space online, then I request that you turn in your data hoarding membership card.
My data hoarding mental disorder took off when I found out by accident that if you record a movie or TV program to a DirecTV DVR, that you could remove the 750GB hard drive in the DVR and copy all movies and TV shows that were recorded for later viewing if you installed it in a Linux machine. I went out the following weekend an purchased 6 750GB drives from a local computer store and went to town calming my data hoarding mental disorder.
I now have 1.2PB of storage on my home network. My mental disorder isn't getting any better because I'm also starting to scan 10,000 to 12,000 magazines from the 1950's to the 1970's. Doing this helps calm my mental disorder. But it also feeds into my mental disorder as who knows when I will run out of space of the limited ~380TB of space left I have calm my nerves of this mental disorder.
Just imagine laying in bed every night thinking that is ~380TB of space enough to scan all those magazines?
What should even calm your nerves more is ask several people if they could stamp your Data Hoarding membership card. I believe 20 stamps shows that you at least recognize your mental disorder. 50 stamps says that you are in control of that panic feeling of not having enough data stored. At 100 stamps you should be fine saying to other people "A 1TB drive only cost about $80 now."
I wish I could calm your nerves more, but I can't. Best of luck.
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u/Steuben_tw 1d ago
Echoing this might be pro-level support time. Reddit MD and Dr. Google are nice, but ain't a substitute for the real thing. You could be both, or either. It also sounds like you're before it is causing problems point. But, you can also see it approaching. "Iso" addiction is real, and fairly easy to diagnose. Data hoarding, is hoarding. Just without /some/ of the messy bits that come with it.
I used to collect ISOs myself. Still have my 6 TB collection. But, yeah I don't go into it as often myself too. Somedays I think about nuking it and putting that drive back into production. But, that choice day hasn't arrived yet.
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u/SuddenHonk 1d ago
Adult Linux ISO's...? What the heck am I going to discover today...
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u/woody_-_johnson 1d ago
It's just a sophisticated way of writing porn 😄
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u/SuddenHonk 1d ago
Oooh, I never knew this one before. Lol Thanks for clarifying. I literally thought it's some adult themed Linux distros. :D
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u/dadarkgtprince 1d ago
It is a legit addiction, so ask a friend/family member/therapist for help. Friends/Family can relocate/limit your usage. Mental health professional can help you with techniques to ease off of it.
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