Getting an External CD/DVD Burner to Work Properly

Hello!  This is a little bit of a tricky problem, but hopefully you can help me fix it.
I have a (very old) 15' Macbook Pro which I've upgraded with an SSD and OS X 10.6.8.  The only problem I'm currently having is getting an external CD/DVD burner to work correctly.
The CD/DVD drive on the computer itself is broken (it will not load CDs), but it is powered and makes noise when I press the eject button.  As such, I went out and bought this external drive.
The drive works properly- I was even able to use it to boot from my install CD and use disk utility to create a backup of my computer.  CDs/DVDs loaded into it are recognized and work perfectly.
The issue I have is that the unit will not burn CDs.  I've tried using both the native iTunes burner and my copy of Toast Titanium to burn CDs, but it never works properly.  Whenever I try, the external unit spins up, the progress bar starts moving.... and eventually an error message comes up.  Whenever I use Toast I can select the drive to use, but it seems to be automatically overriding whatever I select and trying to get the internal (broken) drive to burn the CD, since the internal drive starts making noise.  Additionally, whenever I check the CDs I tried to burn, nothing has actually been done and the CDs still show up as being blank.
My question is- are there any settings in OS X that would disable the internal drive and get the external drive to properly burn CDs?  Thanks!

Ah!  Yeah, I didn't even see that- thanks for the heads up!  Unfortunately, my Macbook only has one USB port on each side, and the cable on the external drive won't reach.  I have a USB hub I've been using, but I suspect the unit isn't getting enough power with that on there since it spins up, the disc will mount, and then quickly disappear.  I think I'll try and hunt down an extended USB cord or something.
I also contacted Amazon about trying to find a proper DC adapter for the unit, but they couldn't help me at all.

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