Disabling ATA from Kernel

[lucacerone]

Dear all,
I've recently experienced a few difficulties with my CD-ROM.
Due to some false contact, sometimes when I but into my Ubuntu
machine, some error with the ATA module happens and I get stuck
in Busybox (initfms).
The problem is not about configuration because if I open my laptop
and fix the connection then the computer boot flawlessly.
It came as a kind of a shock to me that if one of the peripheral
fails than rather then skipping its mounting during the boot,
the startup fails.
As my computer is quite old I don't want to spend money for fixing it,
but I don't like the idea to open it every time the contact fails.
So I'd like to know: if I experience further difficulties,
can I disable the ATA module from the kernel?
Is there any simple way to disable the CDROM completely in the case of a failure?

Also, where can I suggest as an improvement the idea of getting a message
like "Failure in loading ATA. Do you want to disable it and boot without
loading the module?" (or any other peripheral.. I do think is crazy that
the boot fails if one peripheral is broken!)

Thanks a lot for your help,
have a nice day, Luca