The firmware is version 1.09 that I got with the drive... it's still suppose to be under warranty so not flashing it.
I just did my first cd burn with the drive. Here is the quality scan from the LG and the one from the pioneer 112d drive (the bottom one with many c2 errors). By the way the pioneer scan took close to 40+ mins to complete

The LG scan took only serveral mins (~ 6-7 mins).

I don't have a desktop where I could test it internally on and I only have a few days in which I could return this drive.
I have access to an old desktop (400Mhz, Pentium2) but don't have long 80-wire IDE to connect it.

Do these scans suggest the drive is bad? They start of okay, but drop to about 4x or less after it reads close to 10min of the 80min disk. It doesn't drop off with the LG burner even though I used the pioneer to burn it.