Back in the days when getting on the internet required killing robots, downloading software was a big deal so I used to do it once and hang onto installers in case I needed them later or maybe needed to revert to an earlier version of something. Now, more than 20 years on, I don’t tend to keep copies of installers but I have more than 250GB of old versions of everything I ever downloaded before about 2015 or so.
I honestly can’t remember the last time, or if ever I have needed to use any of these older versions but I’m reticent to ditch all this stuff in case I one day really, really need a copy of Firefox 2 or IE 5, or even Apple Security Updates from 2007.
I would guess I’m not alone in doing this and interested in others’ thoughts on whether there is any potential value in keeping this stuff, or any potential downsides of getting rid of it.