USB 2 cable causes clicking sound (and the device data not being able to be read) when connected to external HDDs

So I have this USB 2 cable, and it works fine with flash drives (tried with 2 different ones, both USB 2), but whenever I try to external HDDs to it, the HDD makes a clicking sound like it’s turning off and on, and while the device shows up in the system tray, it doesn’t show on “my computer”. I tried this with 3 different external HDDs (all of which use USB 3), and all of them show this behavior (the HDDs work fine though when directly connected via their own cable and not via the extension cable).

So, my question is, I know this cable is somehow faulty, but what exactly is causing this behavior and why do the flash drives work fine (as far as I can tell at least)?

I use Windows 10.