Beachballs, everything halts while DVD drive is working

[capran]

Just noticed a strange thing. While trying to burn an DVD ISO with Toast 7, iTunes stopped playing my music while the DVD-RW drive spun up and checked the blank disc. After it did that and started actually burning, music started playing again. It started and stopped again a couple of other times midway through, and I noticed it happened at the same time the drive made gronking sounds and changed the spin speed.

 

Later when I was trying to read that disc, the same thing was happening. In addition, I noticed that seemingly every app would start and stop like that: Firefox would "pause" while rendering a page, I couldn't switch apps, and menu meters would pause too.

 

I know I've had issues with this drive in the past, probably going to replace it. But why the hell would EVERYTHING sort of hiccup when the drive was gronking???