Well, your experience was the same as mine. It died after about 3 months. Please, do not buy a cd-rom from creative, save your brain cells and your dollars. I believe I am stupider for buying that drive, and I will never regain those lost brain cells. Nice remote VERY annoying voice that kept repeating tray in tray out.
Speed is good.
Only problem is that its quite noisy. CD output could be better as the digital extraction always sounds better. This product is crap. There I said it. It hurt my ear everytime.