Like some of you, I have accumulated more porn in the last 40 years than I could possible watch in the time I have left on Earth, and far more than I could successfully fap to.
Question to those who occasionally cull their collections: What criteria do you use?
For me, it's a combination of an actress whom I no longer feel as strongly about as I once did and a scene-by-scene deletion. For the latter, I'll keep some scenes that break my deletion criteria, usually because she's just so hot I have to keep something of hers, coupled with she doesn't have a lot of material available.
Pete, my advice is to not do it at all. You and I sound like we share a couple of things, namely age (I'm 59) and the fact that we collect porn. I mean that in a true sense of collecting too. I spend a lot of time cataloguing and backing up my collection. I have a friend who collects diecast cars and trucks and I see his obsession in how he collects them and catalogues them and how he knows what he wants and usually where to get it. I see that in myself too. I suspect you're like this too.
Back about 10 years ago, I culled my collection. I deleted scenes that I would no longer watch, and I deleted most of the scenes that were below 480p resolution. I did keep some low-resolution files though because they are scenes I really like, regardless of the crappy video quality. I'm guessing that I culled around 10% of my collection.
And within a few months I regretted culling and spent time and money on VOD sites trying to get some of my classics back.
I realize that you aren't saying that you are planning on deleting older titles, but if you are, keep in mind that many of them can't be replaced if you change your mind later.
I've never even considered a cull again. Like you, I have more porn than I could ever watch, but as a collector, I don't want to get rid of anything. External drives are inexpensive so that's the route I go now. I just add new drives as needed.
One advantage to having so much porn is that when a scene is mentioned in a thread here at ADT, there's a good chance that I have it and can watch it if it has something I'm interested in. Likewise, if someone starts a thread or if I remember a scene that has something that someone is looking for, I can probably make some recommendations from my collection.
Over the Christmas break I tallied up my collection and wasn't too surprised to find that I have 73 TB spread over 21 external drives. I recall that DVD capacity was around 4.5 GB so when I did the math, I was shocked that this is roughly the equivalent of 18,000 DVDs. (I also have everything backed up so it's really 146 TB.)
Maybe I'm a bit obsessed.
But my advice is to think very carefully about any cull. As the saying goes, it's good to learn from your mistakes, but it's better to learn from other people's mistakes.
I only started really collecting in 2019-ish, up to 3 full 4tb externals but the farthest it goes back in terms of pornstars is Kayden Kross, Asa Akira, and Aleksa Diamond since I'm younger.
I have a tiering system for videos based upon multiple criteria: the girl, how she looks/acts in the scene, the direction quality and video quality. They're also separated within tiers by categories of anal, vanilla, and interracial. If I need to make space on my top tier drive, I normally pull content from stars I just roll by when scrolling on the media player. I always flip through the videos first beforehand to make sure I'm on with it and remind myself of the quality of the scene, I end up keeping about 25% of these videos on the main drive. I don't really delete anything, I just buy another drive if I need more space. Probably going to get an 8tb next to make my new main drive to allow for a greater selection, as my media player will only read one drive even if I have two plugged into it.
The past few weeks I've been going through and upgrading whatever parts of my drive I am in the most to from 1080p to 4k - makes a big difference for me but the space situation has been a challenge to navigate around with just 4tb per.
That's something I am currently struggling with as I am running out of disk space.
When this happened previously, I started deleting some scenes, and ended up regretting that later. Then I decided to just keep all and just buy new external drives, which is a pretty convenient way to store porn.
But now I find myself pondering again if I should buy another one. Or just quit altogether.
"Gapes are blackholes that are visible to us" 344 Posts 9/24
Posted - Jan 4 2026 : 2:48AM
It's always interesting to read about everyone's thoughts here.As for admiral,I'm in awe with the size of his collection and he's probably one of the reasons why I've found a lot of great stuff around here.
I'd strictly advise you against removing any scenes before and during the golden age(<~2010) as they are difficult to find due to a lot of their original productions closing down plus new laws nowadays.Many of these scenes regardless of the year of their release have very few copies in circulation so hold on to what you have and what you find it's much better that way.
As for the quality of the scenes,nothing beats Bluray & DVD but then they occupy big spaces too;720p and >3000kb/s bitrate is what I have found to be fine by me for the average scene in this way I cut down on space but for the ones I really like I upgrade them to 1080p(old releases)/4k(new) whenever I find them.
The most important thing I have found to be though is to note down/log the scenes you have saved/willing to save in a notepad,spreadsheet,etc so that you can always come back and refer to it when in need.
The point about keeping stuff that's no longer around is well-taken. I was disappointed in my last foray into the BangBros and Amateur Allure realms to find several desired scenes memory-holed.
I'm not really a collector so much as an accumulator. I have to keep my porn either on my laptop or on a USB drive that travels with the laptop. I recently bought a 4 TB drive and would like to, at least for now, condense all my scenes onto that one drive.
I'm faced with several types of culling opportunities. One is completely eliminating completely some performers that I just don't watch much anymore. Two in the As, for example, are Aaliyah Love and Abbey Brooks. Not a thing wrong with either of them; I just don't click on their folders very often.
Now, having said that, there are some women whom I'm not big fans of but who've generated one or a few scenes that I think are worth keeping. I'm not a big Amy Reid fan, but her blowbang scene with Sasha Knox and her gangbang scene fall into this category. Usually, this category will include gangbangs, blowbangs and spit-roasting (I still like "dog-and-blow-me shows").
Another criterion would be women who've done so many good multi-guy scenes there's not much point in keeping their single-guy stuff, because I never watch it. Think Gianna Michaels, Naomi Russell, and Ariana Jolie.
Then there's the scene-by-scene culling. This obviously is the most time-consuming. Scenes with stuff I don't like are culled in favor of keeping scenes with things I do like. Generally, if it doesn't end in a decent facial, it's gone. If it has anal, it's gone. (Exceptions are gangbangs and some DPS; gaping is out for the most part.) Bad lighting or dark, gone. Cumshots where I'm looking up the nostrils or where her head is hanging upside down, gone. One-v-two scenes are generally gone; the keeps are the ones where one girl is licking balls or shaft while the other one is getting fucked -- g/g interaction does nothing for me.
The point is that there's so much I have that I do like, there's not any point in keeping stuff I don't like.
Funny, I never heard the word "cull" before, so despite the fact that English is not my first language, I foolishly assumed it was a typo, until I read the full post hahaha. Happy to learn something new.
Anyway, I learned the danger of deleting stuff the hard way. But I do delete stuff I've downloaded and then find I don't like at all the first time I watch it (I have a backlog of downloaded content, so it can take some time before I watch it), unless I want to keep it as a way to have a complete collection of say an model or series. But I no longer go back and delete stuff just because I don't watch it regularly anymore.
Knowing that, my advice won't be of much help to you. I assumed you are more of a collector, but since you describe yourself as an accumulator, that will make things different for you. I suspect that if you cull your collection as you mention that you'll be happy with the results and won't have any regrets like others here have.
Thanks! I'm grateful for digital porn since everything I have fits in a briefcase in a closet. If these were on DVD or VHS, I'd need to rent a warehouse!Thanks for the kind words.
Your comment on the need to have some log of your collection is worth highlighting. My collection would be of little value to me if I didn't carefully maintain a list. Well, I have two lists, but more on that in a minute.
How I organize and track my collection is simple, but it works. I'm sure there are better ways to do it, but this is the simple system I started using back in around 1990 when I started to collect more and more porn. I use a simple three-column Word table. The first column is the site or movie name, the second column lists the stars, and the third column in the drive number. If I'm in the mood for a specific scene or a specific star, it's a simple word search. Years ago, I had it printed and in a binder, but now I update it in Word and then convert it to PDF. Printing it is no longer an option since it's currently 475 pages long.
Here's a screenshot as it better shows what I mean.
I have a second list for favourite scenes. It's also a three-column Word document but the middle column lists a star and why the scene is noteworthy. It could be anything, but for example, I like scenes in boats or by pools, so if I get a scene with that, I'll note it on this list. If I want to watch a scene shot on a boat, a simple word search is all I need. That list is 50 pages long now.
I used to delete some scenes for space and because searching was too messy but then I found stash organizer and it completely changed the game for me Everything's nicely organized now like a big library and at the moment I'm using 3 external drives.
Most of the work is done automatically, but if you want to change photos, add tags, it becomes complicated and takes quite a lot of time but it looks great and so easy to navigate
Easy since I don't currently own any physical media. I used to own a few DVDs back in the 2000s for the Virtual Sex series from Digital Playground. I kinda miss the Kira Kener one, but it's not 4K or even 1080P, and if I really want to watch the scenes again it's simple to find on Google.
I don't really cull, just organize. I have lifetime and annual memberships to a lot of mainstream porn sites so I don't download as much as I used to. I also subscribe to some sites for a month at a time every two or three years and I download what I can in that month to watch later. Those are kept on external drives by site. Then I make collections by actresses that I like. There are a lot of girls, over 400, so I have all their scenes stored in folders by name. There's also the risk that companies will delete scenes later (I remember Brazzers purged a whole bunch, Mercedes Carrera scenes, and EvilAngel removing director Jay Sin scenes).
I also don't download as much as I used to because of the decline in mainstream porn and rise of sites like OnlyFans, ManyVids. There's also not that many new girls that enter the industry that I find a liking to. The golden age was really from 2011-2018 when HD was standard and then 4K came along later that there were like multiple daily new scenes I would look forward to. Now I just check my sites for new scenes just once or twice a week.
Like @rearadmiral I have multiple external drives both desktop and portable that I would keep changing out when larger storage sizes became available. It started out with 2TB, then 4TB, then 8TB, then 16TB-20TB. I'm at a point where I no longer need to buy any hard drives for a very long time (assuming no hard drives don't suddenly crap out). I've consolidated to 4 external drives that 16GB+. As backup I would utilize the smaller drives 8TB and below but they are in storage and I don't really touch those drives since I backed up older scenes. I would also utilize 4TB portable SSDs for my absolute favorite actresses (I know it's not cost efficient, but I have 8 x 4TB portable SSDs, so much faster to copy/wake up, takes up a lot less space physically, they make no annoying drive noise and should be more reliable).
I'm not that organized when it comes to my digital collection. I never bother to rename most of files I downloaded. I would just move/copy files in the folder of the actress and/or the site. I guess I would be a hybrid collector/accumulator. If I did do purge, my criteria would be that I don't care for scenes that are in 4:3 ratio and sub-720p, so a lot of pre 2009 stuff I would delete. I was so happy that Digital Playground was early adopters and shot in HD back in the mid-2000s before sites like Naughty America and Brazzers got on the HD train. One of my all-time favorite actresses was Austin Kincaid but I don't have very many HD scenes of her. Probably the most watched scene I enjoy is from 2006 (Control 2).
If you don't want to buy additional hard drives and don't have the space to store your digital files then go ahead and delete the files you don't like anymore to reclaim free disk space.
Coach sent me down the rabbit hole with Stash Organizer man hahaha. I had way too much fun getting it set up tonight, finished the performer page with all hand picked photos from the database. This is going to be a very helpful tool, cheers
"Gapes are blackholes that are visible to us" 344 Posts 9/24
Posted - Jan 5 2026 : 1:49AM
^Can vouch for stash too ,its amazing. Remember to generate and keep your backup files safe .I had fun setting it up when I installed it changing perfomer pages,covers,tags,studios,groups .You can download and customize themes too or even add trackers.Look into connecting to StashDB(if I'm not wrong),it can automatically fetch metdata from their database and save.
I'll check out Stash. I presume that it is on each drive so that each drive is cataloged separately. What I'll do is copy some files onto my desktop and play around with them. I'm not good at learning new tech, but this might be something that is worthwhile learning.
Alright ya'll got me curious about Stash so I installed it on my Mac Mini and connected one of my external drives with 10TB
It was kinda easy to figure the install and configuration part out but when it ran a Scan to add to my library, I only had Scenes, nothing under Performers or Studios? Then I realized scraping was a separate task. Found the support page where I needed to sign up for a free StashDB account and then ran the Identify task, which took 4-5 hours to complete.
WOW Game Changer!! It also helps to easily see duplicate files so I can clean those up and delete them to reclaim some disk space(I sometimes download the 1080p version then later decided to get download the 4K version)
Pretty cool it can also play the media directly in the browser, generate scene scrubber sprites and previews, but that task is going take over a day for 10TB!
I feel like I opened the gates of hell hahaIt's very addictive,the ultimate pain for me it was the cover images of the scenes didnt like most of the stashdb default so i hand picked them all of the 6,000 + scenes i got in my collection
Dude you definitely opened them for me. I completed full organization of my top tier drive, girls and studios fully tagged. Set defaults to highest volume of scenes on both pages and flipped around a bit - I couldn't really believe what I was seeing. The default scene covers definitely work for me, it was eye-popping, every star or studio I clicked on. I'll have to post an example photo or two tomorrow so others can be motivated to realize this themselves, real game changer.
I was super picky on the photos for the performers page though, spent damn near all day choosing photos.
I've yet to find a way to recycle both. And I've searched for years. You can try googling "recycle vhs tape yourCity". After that, it's the garbage can. Unless you know someone who you can donate them to. And won't make comments about your preferences in porn.
I also went and grabbed an Nvidia Shield Pro, sideloaded AndroidStashApp on it and have full TV capability now, PC just has to be on. Next step is the NAS but that will be a while longer probably. A week ago when surfing my stash, I was navigating a shitty, mega-bright light blue interface on some garbage MyPin media player that couldn't even handle 4k 60fps. Stash Organizer is a life changer
Ive had 2 major cullings since collecting porn from the 90's on. One n 2010 and one about 2020. I would say my current collection doesnt have much in it earlier then 2010 . Older stuff just doesnt hold up .I probably have 2% of my collection earlier then 2010.
You're right about the older stuff not holding up video quality wise. VMG set the camera quality bar up really high by 2017 - it took a lot of other companies longer to upgrade but we are seeing them do so now. In the past two years, I've seen massive camera quality improvements from all of Brazzers, Dogfart, Team Skeet, Nubiles Porn, PornPlus studios - their newer videos put their older ones to shame now imo. 4k is the minimum I expect now from any studio, extra points if they shoot in 60fps. Hopefully Reality Kings starts shooting in 4k soon, they are still lagging behind the rest of the pack (they did also clearly improve cameras in 2024, just not to very good ones).
The technology was available - a ton of my favorite stars from 2018-2023 deserved better technological advancements from Brazzers, Nubiles, Team Skeet and Reality Kings to help them shine but they did not get it. PornPlus and Dogfart were always good in this time frame, and are now the largest proponents of 4k 60fps.
As Far as culling, if it's not available anymore or there's a good chance it will no longer be available anymore soon in the future, then i really think twice about culling.
I try to be honest about my frequency of enjoying a piece of content. If i downloaded it and never watched it and it's not even in my taste preference wheelhouse as far as the performer, the scenario, and the activity in the scene, then I have a hard time justifying its presence. Sometime stuff makes it in when you're scrubbing a site from subscription and it doesn't really belong.
I start with the more HD content because it has the potential to free up space faster. One compromise solution is to download a lower res version when you;re collecting for something that you know for a fact you're just not that into, but want anyways in order to "complete" the collection in some way. It's not perfect but it can be a good compromise over time to have more space available down the road.
I'm pushing 20TB now which is the upper limit of my paid plan so I need to go through this exercise soon
For each starlet I like, I basically have what is (in my opinion) their best and most erotic scene. Then whenever I watch another scene I compare it. If it is better and gets me more aroused I delete the first one. If not I keep the first one.
^ I couldn't do what you do. In fact, I do the opposite. When I find a model I like, I hunt down everything I can reasonably find/afford. I realize these are models from long ago, but I can't imagine having just one scene each of Taylor Rain, Gauge, or Jenna Haze. It would kill me to delete any of their scenes (or scenes with any model I like).
My preferences in porn change a lot, e.g., when I first started watching porn I mostly liked women with natural boobs and hated bolt-ons. Then I eventually figured out some of the women I liked (e.g., Anette Dawn, Carmella Bing, Claire Dames) were actually enhanced. Gradually, I ended up doing a full 180 and for about 10 years was only interested in implants and had very little time for natural breasts. Now I like both. I also started off with no interest in asses but have since come to appreciate an ample behind. Similarly, anal scenes used to do nothing for me but now I like them.
In the past, I've deleted scenes and/or models because they were no longer doing it for me only for my tastes to later revert. Or, I'm reminded of a type of scene that I liked years ago but had since moved on from. Often, a particular scene is no longer available, e.g., I lost interest in hot-wives and deleted all such material only to find years later that many early scenes from Please Bang My Wife were never released on DVD so are not available anywhere. So my advice would be to try and buy more storage rather than cull what you already have.
@animal554 I've just posted about how I sort my collection in a more appropriate thread than this one: Porn Stash - Collecting/Databases - Systems -. That thread has plenty more good ideas and advice from other posters with different perspectives and/or priorities so you should find something that suits you.
