Question Hard Drive Running at 100% With SSD

[msmith3009]

I reconnected my hard drive to my PC today after waiting for a data link cable to arrive and it's been running at 100% usage in task manager, with System and COM Surrogate being the two processes killing it. It's so slow I can't search it for files, it's basically unusable.

I really don't want to format the drive as there's files on it I still want, and I basically just connected my hard drive and booted my system, I didn't change any settings. What should I do?

 

[msmith3009]

My hard drive is 5 years old but was running fine before I started using it along with my SSD, it's a 1TB Western Digital.

 

[msmith3009]

Update: I actually have access to my files now, but File Explorer keeps freezing up and it's still running at 100% usage.

 

[Bob.B]

Update: I actually have access to my files now, but File Explorer keeps freezing up and it's still running at 100% usage.

Post a screen shot of crystal disk info for this hdd.
What is a data link cable?