Problem with cd/rw disks

Time after time I experience problem with cd/rw disks in Ubuntu Feisty. Not even does if fail to blank the disk, but even to mount the volume.So I have to turn to Windows for the sole purpose of reusing my cd/rw disk. None of the Ubuntu versions I have tried to use until now, have managed to handle cd/rw disks. I see there are command-line to erase a disk, but it cant be used when the volume cant even be mounted. In Win it is as easy as right click and erase disk.