We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
Not to discourage you, but I have nearly 10TB of apk files and I still think its not enough haha
I started with small, so you can
Good luck!
Wow thats beyond massive
How on earth do you have 10TB of APK files? Console game collections are that size and they can get pretty damn big in size per game.
Genuinely curious, that sounds like an amazing collection.
Web scrapping, constantly updating and keeping old files, years and years of data collection
How do you keep up with updates?
Considering how often a game or app gets taken down from the play store or simply refuses to install because its not been updated for your version of android, (even though the game will likely work just fine) I would highly recommend archiving APK files.
for only 8 gigs i wouldn't even bother thinking about it tbh
Most of them are not in playstore anymore and this folder includes OBBs. I tried running some of them but unfortunately they dont run anymore. At least on android 9+. I have deleted them now.
I would assume you could emulate an older version of Android and run them on that?
Are you mad??
You could have tried on an older android device first. But for 8 gigs, I wouldn't even have bothered. I'd just throw them in a bucket and be done with it.
Or emulator
Idk why people are downvote u lol, if they don't work and hold no value to you anymore, there's no reason to keep it, whether it's 100gb, 100gb or 100mb.
The downvotes are because OP made this post asking if is worth it to keep it. Then goes on and deletes them anyway. Why ask if you've already decided what you were going to do in the first place.
Android 14 won't run any of these old apps (only allows 64 bit) so it was pointless to keep anyway.
Why do you ask, then.
OP thought 8gb is a lot and were proud to show it off. I had like 50gb of apk and shit. It's not that I dont want to deletes it, I just lost it in my nested folder.
No, because most of them have data to download anyway, so if they go down, the APK itself will be useless.
If you backup /obb's, it usually won't. From Android 1.0 - 11, that should be fine.
The hard part is with newer Androids that block access to the /Android/data/obb trees.
There's many ways to access obb, like use the built-in file manager.
Anything you find value in keeping safe is worth saving
Make sure to have different versions of Android on tap as well. Custom roms from XDS would be a good place to start.
It's worth it to hoard anything.
Except for CP of course.
Except for CP of course.
Yes, Officer this is the guy I was talking about.
Even CP worth hoarding... if you are one of those dudes working on filters to detect it
don't ask woman about her age
don't ask man about his salary
don't ask ML specialist how they made model capable of detecting illegal content
I'd add:
don't ask the sysadmin why they had to go testify in court
It's never good.
Ooh, so much better versions of games you have
Update: I am fairly new to the nature of this sub and I realized I made a mistake. I should have asked if anyone here wants to hoard these files for me as I am already clearing my APK files. Tbf I havent touched these apks for almost 7+ years.
For additional context, I am not rich and I only have 2TB storage for data hoarding.
I'm more than willing to take on your hoard if you want to share. I've been meaning to get into APK cataloging.
The biggest problem is all the data that's lost because many games are sideloading content/updates on their own. So we need not only the apk's (which are also important of course) but all the extra stuff/real content which has to be dumped from the devices.
if you enjoy hoarding stuff like this then it's worth it. 8GB of space for such a massive archive is really not that much, so it's not like it is costing you anything to archive them.
If you don't want to hold on to these files for whatever reason, upload them somewhere such as archive.org then other people can hoard them if they choose to do so. I bet there is something in there that someone has been looking for, and I guess that's what hoarding data is all about, making sure that media, in this case games, don't get lost to time like many have.
8 gigs isn't really alot so I would say it's worth it tbh
Also lots of older data is getting way harder to find now, so it might be useful for you in the future too
Would you be willing to share this? Torrent or any method that is easy for you?
Absolutely, I got drives full of all sorts from the last 20 years
A lot of old mobile games become lost media. Absolutely 100% worth it. I would honestly recommend you to see if you have some lost media in there
If you don't want it upload it somewhere and share it, every collection has worth.
Cool Archive! Find it all on apkmirror and if some apks aren't available, put it on internet archive or on your website.