Unable to use secondary drive (Solid State Drive)

Hello, having an issue with my Mac mini. It has a dual drive setup. Previously two hard drives but secondary drive was swapped with a ssd. However for the secondary drive, it will not allow me to mount, erase, first aid or restore the drive. My first assumption was that the hdd was failing until I swapped this secondary hdd with a new ssd (which I know works fine) and the same thing happened (will not allow me to mount, erase, first aid or restore drive). I am thinking the SATA cable to the secondary drive may be faulty. What do yous think??