My cdrom on hdb works eratic

From time to time my cdrom drive stops reacting. The light does not work and ejecting and closing does not work. This was regular with sound cd's, right now I even get problems with my Suse cd's. The cdrom drive, atapi rw is connected to hdb. Hda hdc and hdd are relative small hard drive. I remember somewhere that the cd drive should be on the primary address. Is that right and could that cause my problem?

I am using 7.3 I do not like to experiment with that because I can imagine that if I change places with one of the hard disks I certainly have to change things in the fstab and perhaps on other places too.