PC won't consistently recognize HDD/ HDD freezes

[ahobbitstail]

I bought a secondary HDD for my home built pc, and it's been... problematic.
The PC occasionally will recognize the HDD, such that it's been formatted and I've even moved some files over to it. But most of the time the machine refuses to acknowledge it's presence at all. I've already gone through half a dozen SATA cables and the same number of ports on two different HDDs. (I've upgraded my HDD, MoBo and RAM since the issue first began, but it has persisted despite a HDD change.) At this point I don't even know what to do.

I mentioned that it does occasionally recognize it. Whenever this happens, I jump for joy and try to get to my files within the HDD, but whenever I get into a particularly bulky file the system freezes so hard that I have to shut the whole machine down. Immediately following one of these bouts, the system again refuses to acknowledge my drive for another three weeks (no exaggeration).

The drive has a healthy whirring noise whenever it is recognized, but I dunno how relevant that really is, given the situation. Also, whenever the HDD is disconnected, my boot time from my SDD is less than fifteen seconds, but with it attached and recognized, the boot time is significantly longer, sometimes up to five minutes.

I'm so confused as to what is happening.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

That HDD is failing that's what's happening, backup any important data from that HDD whenever you get it running and if you are still under warranty return it to the seller.

 

[Beezy]

I bought a secondary HDD for my home built pc, and it's been... problematic.
The PC occasionally will recognize the HDD, such that it's been formatted and I've even moved some files over to it. But most of the time the machine refuses to acknowledge it's presence at all. I've already gone through half a dozen SATA cables and the same number of ports on two different HDDs. (I've upgraded my HDD, MoBo and RAM since the issue first began, but it has persisted despite a HDD change.) At this point I don't even know what to do.

I mentioned that it does occasionally recognize it. Whenever this happens, I jump for joy and try to get to my files within the HDD, but whenever I get into a particularly bulky file the system freezes so hard that I have to shut the whole machine down. Immediately following one of these bouts, the system again refuses to acknowledge my drive for another three weeks (no exaggeration).

The drive has a healthy whirring noise whenever it is recognized, but I dunno how relevant that really is, given the situation. Also, whenever the HDD is disconnected, my boot time from my SDD is less than fifteen seconds, but with it attached and recognized, the boot time is significantly longer, sometimes up to five minutes.

I'm so confused as to what is happening.

are all the motherboard/chipset/controller drivers up to date? BIOS? is it set to ACHI mode? I assume since you've gone through so much playing with the BIOS settings was the first thing you did.