I've seen nothing but problems with Lite-On drives. From noisiness to general breakage.

I'm sorry to hear that. I do agree on the noise, though. But I'm quite annoyed with how loud my whole machine is, so it's not a big extra step to notice the drives as well.

I currently run two Lite-On drives: a 16x10x40 burner, which I rarely use to burn, and a 16x DVD. EAC testing states that my DVD drive is better for secure ripping, although I don't get much speed out of it; typically anywhere from 3-7x. But then I don't do a whole lot of ripping, either. On the flipside, however, if I set up EAC to not worry about perfect rips, then I'll see rip speeds averaging 30x with my burner.

I've never had a problem with a Lite-On drive. I have at least 4 in the house, and some of them are at least a few years old.