How do I eject a disk from my external drive?

I do not know what happened overnight. Plugged in my Super Drive but did not see it in the Finder. So went to the Drive Eject icon in the upper right menu bar, clicked it and the disc was ejected. most all other methods I tried do not work yesterday. I fact it cause the Finder to not be responding in the Force Quit menu; just hung up everything. I'll try it again today with another disc. thanks for you immediate response.