Is there any way to prevent the optical drive from making that clunky sound every time I restart my MacBook Pro or wake from sleep? It's not really necessary, at least for me.
Oh, that sound, I thought you were talking about CD spin-up. But still, no there is no way to prevent it. It is necessary in order to check if there is a CD in the drive when you wake up the computer. You wouldn't like it if you put a CD in your drive before waking it up and then when it woke up the computer didn't recognize the CD now would you?