Is this what you had in mind? 
use warnings;
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my %hash;
while (<DATA>) {
    my ($id, @description) = split;
    $hash{$id} = [@description];
}

# let's print out what we have
print Dumper( \%hash );

__DATA__
Data_Type:1234567890    data data data    data data
Data_Type:1237834810    data2 data2    data2 data2    data2

[download]

This prints out: 

$VAR1 = {
          'Data_Type:1234567890' => [
                                      'data',
                                      'data',
                                      'data',
                                      'data',
                                      'data'
                                    ],
          'Data_Type:1237834810' => [
                                      'data2',
                                      'data2',
                                      'data2',
                                      'data2',
                                      'data2'
                                    ]
        };

[download]

In reply to Re: Hash from a file by toolic
in thread Hash from a file by Anonymous Monk

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