iMac:upgraded to 10.13.6 and superdrive

OS: 10.13.6 High Sierra (21.5 inch mid 2014 model)

Superdrive connected via USB

Hello - looking for assistance in regards to my superdrive no longer mounting/burning and doing the following:

a) will not mount a burned DVD or CD or unformatted one for that matter, upon insertion it makes 3 consecutive noises and then ejects itself (so the unit is functioning and trying to mount but can not complete the task). I have tried multiple disks and dvds to see if any would mount.

b) it no longer shows in system report (I believe in the past it showed up as a Pioneer DVD/RW but I am going by memory) now it only shows under disc burning as the following: HL-DT-ST DVDRW GX50N:

c) no longer shows up under External when in disk utility (again - going by memory but I thought it used to show here as well)

The drive worked just fine prior to the most recent upgrade that I did. Since the update I can no longer use my superdrive and wonder if it's a OS issue? I find it suspicious that it would stop working right after an upgrade. Is there anything possibly hardware related (ie do I need to update to a thunderbolt end?)? I have searched online but have not found anything that will work. I have zapped PRAM, reset my SMC, tossed the finder prefs, unplugged the unit and waited and tried using terminal to use: sudo nvram boot-ars="mbasd=1" which upon entering my password gave me an error message. And finally, yes - the unit is silver side up and on a flat surface, the only thing I haven't tried is compressed air - but really how to dust out that opening easily?

Any suggestions? Am I at the mercy and hope it is a glitch that needs a patch? I do use the cloud, but also prefer to have access to burning my own media. Hopefully someone else has had the same issue and can provide me with some assistance because I haven't found anything that works.

Thanks in advance!