Query removable drives (CD-ROMs, flopies etc) for media presence

[Borsenkow Andrej]

Is there reliable way to query drives for media presence? I have tried
query_disk_change but it returns 1 if called without media inserted (it
correctly works if media is present when it is called). I need it for
CD-ROMs (IDE or SCSI) and possibly for other drives with removable media
like floppy, Zip, Jaz.

So far I tried with two IDE CD-ROMs and floppy and all show the same -
query_disk_change always 1 when no media is present.

The reason is I'd like to avoid media access when it is known no media
is present. The kernel is 2.4.17.

TIA

-andrej