ASUS external optical drive issue / UL30VT-A1

I have a new ASUS UL30VT-AT laptop running Windows 7 HP 64bit, which came with no optical drive. I bought the ASUS external Blu-Ray drive SBC-06DIS-U and hooked it up today.

When I hooked it up for the first time it detected it and loaded drivers just fine. I made a backup using the A1 Recovery Burner, which took about 2 hours but worked OK.

I installed the software that came on the CD with the drive, and that required a reboot to take effect. I left the Optical Drive hooked up during the reboot and tested it by playing a DVD. It played OK, although it did lock up on exiting, but then I saw there was no longer any Safely Remove Hardware icon in the Taskbar. I pulled up the Safely Remove dialog box manually by using the "RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll" command in the Run area, but when I try removing the ASUS drive it says "Problem Ejecting ASUS SBC-06D1S-U USB Drive" and "The ASUS SBC-06D1S-U is not removable and can not be ejected or unplugged."

It is showing in My Computer as BD-ROM Drive E: and does appear to be working.

Other devices are bringing up the Safely Eject Hardware icon in the taskbar, but this ASUS optical drive no longer brings up this as an option and the Manual removal attempt fails.

Is there any way to get the Safely Remove Hardware icon to display when I use this drive? Is it safe to remove it as long as the drive light is not on or blinking?

Thank you.