The annoying messages about failing to read CD/DVD capacity from kernel caused by hald polling the drive

There is a problem in Breezy's hal code which affects machines with some optic drives (including "TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L532M" DVD burner on my Compaq V2000 laptop), which causes the machine to output error messages such as the below from the kernel to log files and text console (when it's active):

ATAPI device hdc:
  Error: Not ready -- (Sense key=0x02)
  Incompatible medium installed -- (asc=0x30, ascq=0x00)
  The failed "Read Cd/Dvd Capacity" packet command was:
  "25 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "

This happens only when no media is in the drive, and as soon as you insert a CD/DVD, the problem is gone. This happens on other distro's as well (namely Fedora, see: http://www.humboldt.edu/~te8/misc/hpzd8230us.html). The drive works quite well otherwise.

We believe this problem is related to hald, namely, the hald-addon-storage module, which polls the drive for media information without checking its status first. There is a thread in Ubuntu Forums on this issue: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=64388

I have submitted the solution I've found (and has worked for me) at: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=876001&postcount=13

Perhaps you could take a look at it, and decide if you can incorporate it (or some other fix) into Ubuntu.

Thanks for your consideration!
Ehsan Akhgari