External hard drives keep running after Safely Remove

Recently my external hard drive started to keep running after I go to the taskbar and click Safely Remove Hardware > Eject External USB > Notification says you can safely removed it. The light on the HD is on and you can hear the disk spinning. I don't think they used to do that. Is it safe to unplug them when this happens?

Don't know if it makes any difference but I use a third-party file manager called Xplorer2 but I have had it for many years and haven't changed anything and I don't have any new software that has anything to do with external drives.

You really don't need to use the Safely Remove Hardware option since Windows 7 doesn't use delayed write on external drives.
As long as the light on the hard drive isn't flashing, just unplug it.

OK thanks - but I gotta say it sounds to good to be true. Maybe I was traumatized by Win 95 and it imprinted a need to walk on eggshells around certain things on Windows that are no longer problems.

Every external drive is set to "Quick Removal (default)" under hard drive properties "Policies"

The other option is to use "Better Performance" aka "Delayed Write"