Have just bought a Samsung usb portable cd / dvd rw drive. It's playing cds & dvds fine but, neither sound forge, Audacity, nor, Adobe Audition recognises the drive so I can't get anything extracted from the cds.
I've downloaded the latest firmware, no change. The drive by the way is Samsung SE-208DB/TSBS.
OP system is windows XP

Does it show up under "My Computer" ?

yep it does Bob

Odd.

The order matters to some software (including BIAB) so you should have the device connected and powered before loading the application program. If Windows sees the drive but the software still doesn't, that's indeed puzzling.

My only thought is that your new external CD drive might not run fully under Windows XP. Did it say it would? You could test it on a newer operating system. Also check with Samsung support.

furry,

The "tech specs" on the Samsung page don't mention OS's, but the main page does list Win 7.

Do you have any other programs that you can try to use the drive with besides the ones you mentioned?

Have also tried to extract a track from biab, that shows up blank as well. Have contacted Samsung. That's 4 different programmes all showing up blank yet, the drive shows up in my computer.
Specs DID say windows XP

Sonar can import a track as a cda file & then export as wav. Roundabout way that'll do just now till I get a fix

I doubt you will find anything other than ripper programs, sonar has its own, which is why that is working. You have to rip the file off the CD/DVD first and save it to your computer as WAV, before any other program can read it. Not tried it but Windows Media Player may also be able to rip and save as WAV.

- correct, it can

This is likely the answer. I do know that Tracktion as a DAW software will also directly import CD Audio as a function, but it's doing an on-the-fly conversion to it's own native audio (some flavor of .wav) for use in projects. As far as I know the ability to directly pull audio off of an audio CD is a fairly rare thing to have in a DAW software - which is why your long list of programs that "don't recognize the drive" are behaving as expected. They are looking for non-CDA type files on the drive and not finding anything, just likely commercially formatted audio CDs.

It's the commercially formatted cds I'm having problems with. ( in other words commercial music cds )
Maybe I might be better to try another drive and just send this one back ?

Have ordered a Lite on IDE internal drive from Amazon. It's Lite-on ones I've used since my computing days started really so hopefully it'll be ok.

Are you absolutely sure that it's all commercial CDs? This has a certain smell of the Sony DRM Rootkit debacle.

Here is a list of commercial CDs, which when inserted into a CD ROM drive on a computer, would not allow one to see the CDA, agree to a EULA, which then in turn installs a rootkit on your machine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Compact_Discs_sold_with_XCP

This is a long enough list, that perhaps you are trying one of them?

Also, sorry to ask, but is the USB CD drive truly plug and play, or perhaps there are drivers necessary to properly install and see commercially formatted CDs?

All the cds I have are indie ones produced by small country labels, Scottish traditional given to me by artists themselves or Irish country. I havn't bought any cds by major artists for years, so that ain't the problem.

Also I did check with Samsung and they said no drivers were required. I'll take it to a mates house at a later date and check on his pc