Optical drive annoyances (Windows I suspect)

Mods, please move this if there's a better place, but I don't believe it's specific to any particular make or model of notebook.

I've always been bothered by the way Windows handles the optical drive. It spins up way too often, slowing down whatever I'm doing until the drive gets done reading. The specific problem I'd like to fix now is that whenever my m1210 comes back from standby, Windows insists on reading from the optical drive, which is (relatively) loud and annoying. Is there any way to tell Windows not to read from the optical drive unless I tell it to, by actually accessing something on it?

 

I'm not aware of ways to tell Windows when or when not to access an optical drive. You might want to look at Nero DriveSpeed. You can change the spin down time and cap read speeds with it.