Had a retired IT director show me why we should always label cables

Guy came into the shop last Wednesday with a server he'd built himself. Asked me to swap out a power supply. Opened the case and every single cable had a little printed label. Yellow for SATA, blue for power, red for fans. Took me maybe 4 minutes to get the old PSU out. He told me he started doing that after he spent 8 hours tracing a bad cable in a hospital server room back in 2003. Been labeling everything ever since. Has anyone else run into a simple habit like that from an old-timer that just made sense immediately?

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aaron_wilson173mo ago

Labeling cables is one of those moves that pays off FOREVER later.

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brookekelly3mo ago

Labeling cables is one of those moves that pays off FOREVER later" - you nailed it. I actually watched a video from some tech YouTuber who said he spent a whole Sunday labeling every cable in his server rack and it saved him hours every time he had to troubleshoot. Funny how something that feels tedious in the moment becomes the best decision down the road, @aaron_wilson17.

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