no your not having any thing speical unto your selve.
for some reason i tosted all my memorex cdrws when i tried to use them in the samsung. I think they are using a different chemical combonation for their disks then what samsung can see.
as for the trouble with the drag and drop packet writing your more then likely using the program for it called direct cd. from the roxio ez cdcreator program i took all that out it was messed up.
if you can find a copy of the program called " INCD"
found the url for you here it is.
http://www.nero.com/en/index.html#rootlook on the right side of the page scroll down to the downloads area you will see incd listed there.
that works i have it on all the computers here. even thought winXp Does Not need it to burn files on the cdrw it does need it to see the files from the other computers i use this on. but this one works
as for the distance of mbs used when doing packet writing the program will format and use the cdrom space for keeping the files on it needs to tell it to use the disk as a hard drive.
i have seen 100 mb's or so used for this on my cdrw's. it makes a record of the nonusable disk sectors on the cdrom disk that is needed to be kept there for it too.
i can not see these files it uses but it says it is doing a logical scan of the cd so i know it has to keep all that stuff some place. and i just presume it keeps it on the cdrom.
along with the files it puts on there for the computers that do not have the same packet writing software on to beable to see the files on the cd.
hope that helps.