Documenting how old computers were used

When people receive complete systems (with software, manuals, etc.) do you make any attempt to document the state of the system when you received it? For example, do you record what programs were on the hard drive, what peripherals were included, what the system was used for (either what you were told, or could infer), etc? It seems to me that increasingly, social historians and museums are more interested in _how_ an artifact was used than in the thing itself. But often , especially when I receive multiple examples of the same system, I mix and match parts and programs to suit myself, and lose track of which disk drive came with which CPU, which software was originally installed on each, etc. Information is obviously being lost here. I'd be interested to know what other list members are doing, and how important you think the information being lost is. Regards, Mark Gregory