Well, I haven't checked them yet however I did pickup a powered USB hub and it appears everything is fine now. Every time I boot, cold or warm, the CD drive is there and no errors logged now.
I did get a few stalls at boot during my preliminary tests but I believe I read somewhere someone said they found that issue happens with FLASH attached at boot and when I unplugged the FLASH, it booted. Sometimes it boots fine with the FLASH though.
We'll see what happens - only time will tell.