Comment 17 for bug 120839

i found a workaround for my particular system (see above somewhere in the comments) which has worked for me for a month or two now:

/etc/rc.local:

####################################
echo "Killing the hald polling processes to try to stop CD drive from hanging..."
if /usr/bin/pkill -f 'hald-addon-storage: polling'; then
    echo "Killed."
else
    echo "Warning: hald polling process not found or not killable."
fi

echo "Disabling APM of /dev/sda ... "
/sbin/hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
####################################

The overall problem seems to be caused by the first part - hald polling the CD drive every couple of seconds. The second part (APM) was done because some *buntu users have posted that the default settings are tough on the hard drive in terms of wear and tear.

The down side to the above solution is that DVDs/CDs won't automount. But i'm old-fashioned anyway and prefer to manually mount all external devices, so that doesn't bother me in the least bit.

i hope this helps someone else out there...