[Dead Mans Hand]

Erm, maybe a noob question but could you provide more information on the starforce CD? Unless it's overly personal, then, I really don't need to hear it.

Anyways, the driver isn't causing your CD-ROM to spin up (that seems to be the issue here, right?) That's your BIOS reaching out to check for hardware, when it detects the CD in the drive it will attempt to read it to see if the CD is bootable or not, that's all. It shouldn't do any damage to your CD-ROM though it is a, extremely minimal, extra bit of wear on it.

Also, drivers are attached to the kernel by the way, so while I'm not certain even if it's on demand, the driver should still be there, perhaps just not being used as the primary. Otherwise you'd have to reboot after turning it on for the kernel to recognize it. ja?

In short: If you don't want the drive to spin up (as much) leave it empty before booting.