Is my LG GCE-8160B Burner faulty?

[Ice006]

I have a feeling that there's something wrong with my burner (LG GCE-8160B). The problem seems not to be in the burning process, but rather, when reading CD's. (It is the only CD drive I have in my computer). I own heaps of old playstation games, many of which are getting visibly scratched, but still read fine. I want to back them up so I can use the burnt copies instead of the originals. But when I use Nero or Adaptec Easy CD-Creator 4 (which came with the drive), it seems to skip straight over the data tracks, but continue to read the audio tracks fine (if there are some). Nero doesn't even get that far. When I try to copy, it will just skip the data track, proceed as normal, open the tray and prompt me to insert a blank CD. I'm not stupid enough to think a 400 meg CD can be read in 15 seconds though, so I have to exit.

For a couple of games I opened up the copy-cd dialogue in Easy CD Creator 4, and opted to save an image file instead of copying. This seemed to work, but that way I can't get audio files. But once I got a bit further in the copy CD mode (actual copy, not saving an image file). It read the source CD up to about 99%, but then this error came up saying something like "More than 100 form transitions detected. Cannot continue". (I believe the game was Breath of Fire 3, not like it matters).

Has anybody else had problems copying PSX games? Or is it some sort of piracy protection that won't let me do this? I paid good money for this drive, I expect it to do what I want it to do. I might have to take it back and pay the difference for a better drive if they all do the same thing.

On a side note, Max Payne. My friend has a burnt copy. Doesn't work though because it needs a patch or whatever. Anyways, I found out who burnt it for him (the pirate!), and asked him what he used. He said Nero, so I thought, Ok, I'll try that. I don't actually need to copy the CD, but the drive won't even let me. Stuffs up on the read process at the very start. From what I understand, the disk was written in such a way that it spins the speed right down when initialising the game to verify the CD. I believe this to be a form of piracy protection so that when the CD is burnt, it won't burn it the same, so the game will know it's a pirate copy. Fair enough, but why won't my burner even READ it in copy mode? It reads it fine when I play the actual game. The error I got in Easy CD Creator 4 was "05/64/00 - "Command error - illegal mode for this track". (Which makes me think inbuilt piracy protection in the drive).

Fair enough, Max Payne is a new game with all these newfangled protections, but when I want to legally back-up my PSX games and the drive won't even read them, that makes me think that the hardware is faulty, seeing as I once borrowed my friend's old 4-X LG burner, and it worked fine for copying PSX games.

Has anybody else had this/these problems, or have I just got a faulty drive that needs replacement?

P.S. I did a search on the boards just then, and found out that this drive mightn't be able to do something like "Read RAW mode 96+". In any case, the drive doesn't do what I want it to do, so I'm gonna take it back.

PPS. Yes, I know next to nothing about burners.