ASUS Sata DVD-burner with solid green light problem...

Well...I know this is probably a bad drive (ASUS DRW-2014L1T), BUT as a computer enthusiast I fell like this is worth at least asking about. Furthermore, I could not find anyone else on the entire net with this issue. Not saying it doesn't happen, but maybe I am the only person who is cracking the drive open rather than sending it back to ASUS for just less than the cost of a new drive. So here is what happened....

First off, this is a Hackintosh machine (Q6600, GA-EP45-DSR3 rev1.0 F10 bios). To properly boot an OSX86 machine you need a sata DVD drive (well 99% of the time you do). The drive was working fine, but has thrown out I'd say 3 or 4 DVDs while spinning (quite a scary event). Anyhow, I was using Toast Titanium 9 and the program stopped responding so I had to do a force quit. It was at this point that the drive ejected a spinning disc. When this happened before I would have to reboot to get the drive to retract and start working correctly again. This 5th time the drive ejected and upon a restart did not respond. The bios finds the drive perfectly, but the OS does not see the drive at all.

The difference this time versus the other times is that the green activity came on and stayed on. It has a solid green light 100% of the time. Things I have tried to no avail:

1. Reboot computer
2. Swap Sata cables
3. Change Sata ports on the motherboard (bios still sees it no matter which port it is in)
4. I even disconnected the Sata cable and just left power connected...still solid green light.

So without a Sata cable connected, and only power, I am at my wits end. I mean this is just nuts. I have posted in ASUS forums, but received no answer. The drive is 45 days old from Newegg and I have read that it would cost about $15 to send the unit back to ASUS (postage and packaging). A new drive (NOT ASUS!) would only cost me $25 and I live in Chicago so I have a Microcenter a mile or two away. Plus, I have officially cracked the unit open and cut the void sticker so there is no returning or exchanging anything at this point.

Questions:
1. Is this some sort of protection mode?
2. Can the unit be reset manually..like inside the unit?
3. The firmware is up-to-date from factory, would it be worth trying to reload this? Think it can even be done?
4. Any other ideas?

Thank you for all your help.