Freakin' file addict LOL.
Service manuals, spec sheets and in particular dealer updates are just as much a tool of the trade as a spanner or screwdriver
When I kicked off it was 80% research time & 20 % hands on time
Now it is about 40:60
Checking first is a lot easier on the wallet than breaking & replacing at your own cost or even just doing the job twice
I keep my service files on two backed up hard drives plus on an old lap top down in the workshop
Currently the folder is 25 Gb for 6,000 files and I add about 10 or so a week .
You need them because things always come in that are wrong, like rcol0000's thread with the B & S twin with a throttle link spring fitted from a couple of days back that should not have been there in the first place .
Because of the floods I now run all of the computers off an external portable hard drives with SSD if possible thus the computers original disc has nothing on it but the base operating system, in a stand alone partition & another partition for the data files which is a mirror of the documents directory on the portable drives.
Star uses the cloud but I have an adversion to trusting any third party like Google or Microsloth or Amazon ( they are becoming the largest supplier of cloud capacity ) to look after my data that I have spent 10 years accumulating ned to make my living .