I updated the drivers from the Windows site, yes. and it did not help.
I have another update. Switching to AHCI on the Gigabyte controller did not completely help. After resume, it brought power back to the drive, ie. I could open and close the tray by pressing the button.
But the drive was still no longer visible in Windows
The only thing that finally fixed it was to put the Lite-on drive on the ICH9R controller of the motherboard instead. I swapped it wither another optical drive which works fine on the Gigabyte controller, including sleep/resume. All my other optical drives do. Only the Lite-on has the problem. Very strange.
I have been mostly happy with Vista 64-bit. I wouldn't go back to XP. But this bug was definitely puzzling.