Something a bit weird just occurred, I switched the USB cable back to my desktop, and even though I used the same USB 3.0 port that I had before, Windows still tried to install the driver, but then popped that it had failed. I then recycled the power switch on the docking station, and Windows kept sounding off both connects and disconnects in rapid succession, but never mentioned anything about installing the driver again. Rechecking the connections didn't solve anything, so I connected to a USB 2.0 port instead. At first, that seemed to solve things, because it only sounded a connection once, without any disconnects, but then Windows popped a dialog saying that the file system needed to be checked. It performed that operation without finding any problems, but then said that the drive needed to be reformatted. When that was done, I attempted to check it with HD Tune, but it squawked about a read error and aborted. Restarting HD Tune eliminated the read error dialog and it benched normally, and the drive appears usable.
What I'm wondering about is the cause of all of these problems? The only thing that comes to mind is that instead of using Windows Safely Remove Device function, I waited until the drive was idle and simply turned off the power switch. I remember reading somewhere about needing to use that removing device function for a USB drive, but I can't count the number of times that I've unplugged a USB flash drive without any problems resulting. Is the powering off method that I used the reason for the problem?