Happened to me as well, freezing up the whole system, especially with many/large files. None of the suggestions I found online actually worked. Happened on USB drives as well.
Then my whole HD gave up completely. Replaced it and all problems are gone. USB drives as well: turns out Linux at least tries to read it so you can attempt to save some data, while Windows just says it’s unreadable.
Many people my age have terrible boomer parents who just had kids because “that’s just what you do”. They didn’t even consider you could just not make babies.
Maybe we just think more for ourselves than the older generation.