jon2121 - Well I just tried turning SMART off and placing it on the second chain as slave and it refuses to read dvd-r discs...

I might have just been grasping at straws I guess but its better to try and fail than to not try and then discover it was something simple that was wrong all along.

I would vote for incorrect bios setting if not for the fact that I have had 2 other drives made by different companies work just fine there. I had an NEC rebrand work fine and currently a Memorex, i forget what it really is, work fine.

I'd try moving it to the first chain and putting more work into it, but at this point I really don't care. It will take me more effort than I want to put into to move and reroute cables (as I sit here and try to think of ways to do it easier) to try it on the primary chain.

I'm going to keep looking for an external case that will let me use the SH-S182D as an external drive and get up to a 16x burn out of it... And hopefully I might even discover a drive in the next batch of new ones to appear that will work with my system.

Hope springs eternal, but I do know the next drive I try will NOT be a samsung if I can help it...