I have a workstation with mint linux 12. It seems like the DVD drive on the machine keeps randomly "activating". By activating it makes noise, the light turns on, and it seems like it is checking if a disk is in it.

At first I thought I was being hacked and someone/something was trying to check if I had media in the DVDRom drive. I ruled that out with netstat and rkhunter.

I checked my logs and the only thing I can find that might help point out the problem are these repeated chunks in syslog:

Mar 24 17:47:31 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9846.551422] ata2.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:08:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 pio 16392 in
Mar 24 17:47:31 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9846.551424]          res 51/40:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
Mar 24 17:47:31 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9846.551427] ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Mar 24 17:47:31 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9846.551433] ata2.00: hard resetting link
Mar 24 17:47:32 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9846.868012] ata2.01: hard resetting link
Mar 24 17:47:32 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9847.344054] ata2.00: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Mar 24 17:47:32 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9847.344067] ata2.01: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Mar 24 17:47:32 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9847.376118] ata2.00: configured for PIO0
Mar 24 17:47:32 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9847.393047] ata2.01: configured for UDMA/133
Mar 24 17:47:32 rich-MINT kernel: [ 9847.397046] ata2: EH complete

and again

Mar 24 17:55:28 rich-MINT kernel: [10323.633268] sr 1:0:0:0: ioctl_internal_command return code = 8000002
Mar 24 17:55:28 rich-MINT kernel: [10323.633270]    : Sense Key : Aborted Command [current] [descriptor]
Mar 24 17:55:28 rich-MINT kernel: [10323.633275]    : Add. Sense: No additional sense information
Mar 24 17:55:11 rich-MINT kernel: [10306.640009] ata2.00: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
Mar 24 17:55:16 rich-MINT kernel: [10310.840009] ata2.00: SRST failed (errno=-16)
Mar 24 17:55:16 rich-MINT kernel: [10310.840016] ata2.00: hard resetting link
Mar 24 17:55:16 rich-MINT kernel: [10311.160013] ata2.01: hard resetting link
Mar 24 17:55:16 rich-MINT kernel: [10311.636061] ata2.00: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Mar 24 17:55:16 rich-MINT kernel: [10311.636075] ata2.01: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
Mar 24 17:55:16 rich-MINT kernel: [10311.668122] ata2.00: configured for PIO0
Mar 24 17:55:16 rich-MINT kernel: [10311.684854] ata2.01: configured for UDMA/133
Mar 24 17:55:17 rich-MINT kernel: [10312.105473] ata2: EH complete

(Copied from Pastebin - http://pastebin.com/YNDrnyzH)

If any linux masters could take a quick look at these log outputs and help me understand what is going on , much appreciated.