Late night post, lolz. I'd bet the drive itself has failed. In my experience, Windows 8 is just as good as 7 and XP at auto-configuring peripherals like disk drives and hard drives, possibly better. Don't get me started on Vista, I could fill pages with how many ridiculous software-related issues I had to deal with while using that POS OS I'd bet the drive just took a dump on you.
If it was something like a gamepad or possibly a wireless mouse/keyboard, then it could be drivers, but disk drives in my experience have always worked with the generic drivers in Windows. Even XP had no trouble.
When you scan for new hardware (in Device Manager I'm assuming), go to the drop-down menu at the top and find the option for showing hidden hardware. Then see if anything weird comes up that can't be identified. If you don't find anything, I can almost guarantee it's all the drive's fault.
