I was trying to copy a large amount of files from a DVD to my new MacBook yesterday, and it failed about halfway through. I chose to cancel and the result was that the copy operation just sat there for the next half hour and I was unable to eject the DVD or start another smaller copy operation.
It finally did recover and then I tried another copy operation for a small subset of the files and again it failed and after cancelling that time I was unable to revocer and eventually had to restart with the mouse button held down to get the DVD out.
I tried relaunching finder the second time but that didn't work. Is there another method, using the Terminal perhaps, that I can use to force the copy operation to cancel and free up the DVD drive?