One thing I would recommend is seeing of the DVD drive manufacturer has released a firmware update for the drive. I would also source (borrow?) another dvd burner. You may be having a hardware failure, or even a laser failure which could result in that.
At one time, I have a failing DVD Burner that would read DVDs, burn DVDs (not successful all the time) and read/burn CD-RWs, and one of the first thing it did when failing was it would only burn to certain media types, then it would only burn to CDs and read DVDs, then it would only read CDs and not burn CDs, eventually, it got down to the point where it would somewhat very unreliably read or mount discs.
It worked fine on the mac and bad on a PC at first, but as it degraded, it eventually stopped working on the mac (once, I could only get it working on my PowerMac G5, but not on any PC I tried it out).
It came down to the laser was failing, and when I replaced the drive, all was well.
I would try either getting a different DVD burner, or borrow one from a friend. I am betting something in the drive is going bad. It's a common issue when drives go bad to act wonky like that.
Failing all else, reinstall, or just get a DVD/CD-RW or maybe an external USB 2.0 DVD burner. Or a case and put the DVD burner in it.
As far as the USB thing, I am willing to bet it was a coincidence that the drive is dying at the same time as the USB card was used/OS was upgraded.