Unable to access external hard drives on new MacBook Air with Sonoma

I purchased a new MacBook Air in December. I have several external hard drives which worked on my previous MacBooks. However on the new MacBook Air, I kept getting an error message that I had disconnected them without properly ejecting them even though they were still connected. Now they do not show up at all when I connect them, even using disk utility. And when I plug them into my old laptop they do not appear either. How do I stop Sonoma destroying my external hard drives?