It's the strangest thing — which is my prefatory way of saying I have no idea why this is happening, so hardly know how to search for answers. I apologize if this is something basic or if it has been asked before.

I have an "old" USB hard drive (about 4–5 years old), a Seagate 320GB FreeAgent Go. And it's been a faithful servant. I used it mainly with an even older (vintage 2005) Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop. But then I got a "new" computer, and the drive started having problems. It's not a problem of my "new" PC, since the drive has problems with any computer made in the past 5 years or so.

Plugging it into a "new" computer, the drive starts rhythmically chirping. You probably know the sound. Like a turntable squaking. It's a sound that instinctively makes me think think the drive is failing and I'd better get my data off quickly. At first it only started chirping after a few minutes, chirped for a minute, then the PC quit reading the drive. As time progressed, the duration between plugging in the drive and the PC losing it got shorter and shorter, until now it lasts only a second or two and is completely unusable. Yes, my drive is failing, I was sure.

... Only it's not. During all my panic trying to backup files, I realized that the drive, now unusable with any newer computer, still works perfectly fine with my "old" laptop. It doesn't chirp. It doesn't quit working. I can still comfortably use it for hours with that PC with no problems. Disk scans by that computer indicate there's nothing at all wrong with the drive. It also, I discovered, works perfectly fine when plugged into my new Samsung HDTV, and it has been serving movies for a year or so with no chirping and no symptoms of drive failure or any other issue.

But what the heck? Why does this drive work with those devices and then fail with anything else? I'd like to load some new movies, but now I can't plug the drive into anything. My conjecture is that it has something to do with the voltage of the USB connection — but aren't these things supposed to be a universal standard?

It's possible that it's the file system. If you can copy all the files to a backup folder on your new computer, ensure they're properly copied and then you could try formatting the external drive using the NTFS file system (assuming it's a Windows computer). It's possible that if it's the old FAT file system that newer operating systems may not like reading it, especially if the allocation sizes are non standard. (I don't have enough reputation to add a comment to this effect, so I'm posting it as an answer)

Some Western Digital drives can have issues when using them on Windows 7, but be fine on Windows XP. The fix is to do a firmware update on the drive. Since this is a Seagate, you'll have to check with them for availability of newer firmware for the update.

You might have a similar issue, basically, back up the data on the drive, update the firmware, wipe the drive and reformat.

Your drive pulls its power from the computer. Some computer's ports will deliver more than the standard 0.5A, and your XP box could be one of them. If you can find a USB "Y" cable which has one female and two male fittings, then plug your drive's USB cable into that, the combination will provide 1.0A. If the Win8 box is not delivering enough power, that could solve it.