[RndTbl] creating image file

[millward]

I'm trying to create an image file from a CD
mounted in a CD burner /DVD ROM drive,
but I keep getting error messages when dd tries
to read the CD disk.
I'm using the dd command:
dd if=/mnt/cdrom of=/temp/my_image.img bs=18k
or
dd if=/dev/hdb of=/temp/my_image.img bs=18k
My operating system is Red Hat 9 installed in  hda9.
The cdrom does not have scsi emulation. I removed that
command from the Grub boot because I got worse error
messages when it was in effect.
The drive is defined in /etc/fstab as:
/dev/cdrom  /mnt/cdrom  udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro  0  0
The error messages all look like this:
hdb: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error}
         error=0x54
 Is there another way to create an image file from a CD without dd?