How can I silence my MacBook without powering it down?

Quick summary
My MacBook is running OS X Mavericks and has an unidentified hardware problem with the optical disc drive that, among other things, causes it to make an annoying sound four times right after each other anytime the MacBook checks if there is a disc inside. When I put my MacBook to sleep by closing the lid, it produces this distinct sound exactly every two hours. I would like to know if anyone can help me silence my MacBook while it is in sleep mode.
Background
The optical disc drive is malfunctioning because of repeated rocking and shaking in the past when I used to transport it on the back of my bike. As a result it doesn't work anymore, it eats my discs (as in: I have a really really hard time getting them out again) and it produces a distinct sound four times in a row whenever my MacBook needs to find out if there is a disc inside. I can live with that, I don't use optical discs anyway, so I only have to cope with the sound during the boot sequence.
Recently I upgraded from OS X Snow Leopard to OS X Mavericks and the same night I was awoken by this very sound. I looked at my alarm clock and unconsciencely made note of the time. Somewhat later, I was awoken again and I noted it was exactly two hours later. To me this was an indication that the MacBook apparently runs some periodic check on the optical disc drive in Mavericks that it did not do in Snow Leopard. Needless to say, I wasn't very pleased with this new feature to wake me up in the middle of the night, ironically when my MacBook is fast asleep...
Possible solutions
As far as my imagination goes right now, I can think of four possible directions to get my night's rest back again:
Shutdown my MacBook.
While this will certainly silence the device, I won't even consider this as I'm not willing to give up the responsiveness typical for a MacBook that is brought out of sleep mode. I'm more likely to throw it away (which, on a side note, would also give me my rest back) then wait for it to power up everytime I want to use it.
Leave my MacBook on.
This might be a good temporary workaround, but since it makes a gentle buzzing sound when it's on, for the long term I'd fancy a solution in which I can put it to sleep without it making any more sound. Plus I'd have to plug the power cable in for the entire night and it's supposed to be bad for the battery lifetime to leave the power cord plugged when it is fully charged.
Fix the optical disc drive.
This is most likely impossible, but if anyone has a suggestion, be my guest!
Disable the periodic check when the MacBook is put to sleep.
This is my most desirable solution, but I have no clue how to achieve this, let alone if anyone knows about this check at all. I mean, most of us don't have weird buzzing optical disc drives in their Apple notebooks, so noone would notice such a periodic check. I don't even know if this is actually the result of a check and not yet another malfunction of the drive.
Remove or disconnect the optical disc drive.
As I said, I can't use the drive anyway so fysically removing or disconnecting it is no problem for me. It's not like there is any warrenty left on this ancient device. Plus I might get to feel like a bomb defuser when deciding whether I have to cut the red or the blue wire.
Anyone got a suggestion?

If you're hearing the optical drive noise after putting the machine to sleep, that means the computer isn't really going to sleep or is going to sleep and waking up for some reason after a couple of hours. There are a few places in System Preferences that could be doing this, but I don't have a Mac with Mavericks on it for reference, just one with Lion, so I'm not sure I can help much!
If you go to the Apple menu in the upper left corner and choose Sleep, what happens? Does the computer go silent and stay that way?
For option 5, and assuming you have a unibody MacBook (one that does not have a removable battery), you could try following this guide for replacing the optical drive, but just stop at step 12 (where you disconnect it from the logic board) and that should stop it from making noises. If there's no power going to it, it should be silent!
I don't know what the machine will do with the drive disconnected, but I can't see any harm coming from it if you feel up to tearing it apart.
~Lyssa
PS - leaving the computer on with the charger plugged in won't do it harm as long as you fully discharge the battery once a month or so and occasionally run it on battery in between. My MacBook spent about 80% of its time plugged in and running for several years, and the battery still gave me 3-4 hours on a single charge!

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