Missing 'Safely remove hardware' icon

I was playing with my USB portable hard drive and found to my horror that the icon in the Windows task bar that allows me to safely remove hardware was gone. I didn't want to unplug the cable before choosing that option because I wanted to make sure my data were intact.

I did a bunch of searching, but the proper keywords eluded me. A bunch of people suggested using File Explorer and choosing 'Eject' as though it were a CD/DVD but I didn't have an eject option.

Finally, I came across the answer here: http://blog.monkeyless.com/2006/03/12/safely-removing-hardware-when-the-icon-is-gone/ The secret keyword is hotplug, and so I can find it again, here is the DLL to invoke from Start->Run %windir%\System32\RUNDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll Alternately, make a shortcut by right clicking on the desktop.