Re: When life imitates art...
"Ejecting the DVD drive was easier than painfully tracking all the cables."
Labelling the fecking things avoids the issue in the first place - using labels that won't fall off.
Brother TZe-S641 label cassettes for the equipment (sticks well) and TZe-FX641 for cables (other colour combos are available) are worth buying and can be obtained for far less than the £25 apiece that Brother flog 'em for.
If you have "problems" with people removing labels, then "security" labels will dissuade that practice (TZ-SE4)
Dymo, Brady and others all sell similar labelling systems. Whatever you have make sure you have a good stock of tapes and a labeller in every area (they're not particularly expensive compared with having to trace cables) or people won't do it.
My estimate is that it costs about 8p/label.