DVD Drive Hang

[Peter Hutnick]

When reading a DVD with scratches the drive hangs for a very long
time, and doesn't seem to be right again until after a reboot.  Is
there any way to make a read give up?  Ideally, I'd like to do it
without killing the process that requested the read (i.e. skip over
part of a movie on a scratched DVD).

The drive is a "PlexCombo 20/10/40-12A" on hdc.  It is the only drive
on that cable.

hdparm -w /dev/hdc doesn't do the trick.

Thanks,
Peter