System freezes for a brief moment.

[Libram]

So my computer has recently been having these random mini freeze habits about once or twice a day. Seems to have come with windows 8.1.
I think it may be coming from one of my storage drives or possibly both. When it happens, I hear one of the storage drives or maybe even both spin a little loudly then calm back down after the freeze. Possible dying hard drive? It seems to happen only when the drive(s) have been idle for a long period of time. I'm also wondering if it's some sort of power settings with windows 8.1 trying to conserve energy. I've adjusted "Turn off Hard Disk" power option to 0 minutes. Hopefully that disables it and fixes the problem.

Even though I could be accessing data that isn't located on either of the storage drives, it seems like some actions will (like opening a program located on the SSD, or opening the Metro UI) pull them out of their idle state for a brief moment. I don't have any system files installed to either of them, so it has me sort of confused as to why it would cause the entire system to hangup for a brief moment (4 seconds) and then continue on perfectly fine.

SSD 128GB - Windows 8.1 install
HDD 500GB - Storage Drive 1
HDD 700GB - Storage Drive 2

[lordmatthias]

Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings (for your selected power plan) -> Change Advanced Power Settings -> + Hard Disk -> + Turn off hard disk after -> change to whatever extended time you want (default should be 20 minutes or so). It is possible you could have a failing drive, however I ran into similar issues with Seagate's 3TB drive (I don't remember the exact model) there was actually a drive firmware update that corrected the issue, so that may also be worth looking into.

[Libram]

I've been using my computer for the day and so far it seems that adjusting the power settings for the hard drives worked. No temporary hang-ups.

[Ghostpanther]

I've been using my computer for the day and so far it seems that adjusting the power settings for the hard drives worked. No temporary hang-ups.

Yeah, the first thing I do when I get a new computer is go into the power settings and set it for performance and never to shut off the system. Only thing I have set to power down after 30 mins of no activity is the monitor.