DVD/CD-RW Drive

I have a 6 month old Inspiron 1545 & after 2 months, I started having trouble formatting a CD-RW disk to "use like a USB"

I have already had the drive replaced twice, and each worked fine for about 2 weeks.  I'm back to the same problem.  Sometimes the disks will format, sometimes they won't.  The drive goes through the entire format process then tells me it can't complete the format.

Once this happens, I cannot use the same disk and try again.  The drive won't even recognize the disk.

Dell Tech support suggests that I 1) try another brand of disks (I'm currently using Maxell CD-RW 700 MB disks) and/or because it will read other disks that have formatted I should restore my laptop back to day one.

Is there another solution to this issue?  I really don't want to go back to day 1 because of having to reinstall all my programs.

I appreciate any help anybody can provide.

Thank you in advance.