Yeah what your doing is probably a good thing...
I had problems when i first got my CDWriter, adn used the 'Freebie' software which came with it. it didnt like PSX games and/or some Audio disks, as i guess they had some copy protection in them perhaps, or bad sectors..i dunno. but all was Ok when I got Something like Nero or CDRWin..they all read in binary I think and so just read 1`s and 0`s rather than trying to make sense of file systems on Cd`s and stuff. This is what normally cocks the reading up.
Anyway...hope it helped..
Andy