hdd 100% usage rate

Hi all, My issues began 1 day ago, I turned on my pc and there was an insane amount of chugging upon startup, it was practically frozen. I restarted and had to wait a while before interacting with anything on my computer and then it began working like normal. Fast forward to today and after...

I have a 5TB Western Digital Easystore 2647 External HDD and anytime I try to play games (like Valorant, Apex Legends, etc) that are installed on that drive, they take forever to load up (5+ minutes with Valorant) and then once I get into a match, it takes forever to load into the game (5+...