You’d be surprised to know that a 500GB hard drive can be theoretically copied in 1 year with a 16kb/s transfer.
Dell enterprise series of desktops (Optiplex and Precision) are upgradeable with off the shelf parts. The CPU, RAM, SSD, GPU, Network cards, etc. The same way a regular motherboard from any manufacturer does.
For example an Intel Core 8th gen system would POST with any 8th Gen CPU, any type of DDR4 ram and would boot from any disk. You cannot upgrade an 8th gen to a 12th or 14th gen from any brand, the only proprietary properties of these systems are the case or motherboard form factor and the power connectors.
Do you have a spare set up where you can boot up from that same SSD? Literally any laptop would work plug and play and that would rule out the possibility of it being the motherboard on the OP.
Seconding this, Dell has excellent support for Linux on their enterprise laptops (Latitude and Precision). XPS are another breed, and tend to be marketed as a ultrabook or a MacBook competition.
I have noticed that healthy torrents stall when the ISP closes the port I was using in the end. Several torrent clients have the option to check if the port is open or closed, and also another option to randomize the port at startup.
QBittorrent and Transmission have an option to anonymize or have the data encrypted, and that seems to make a difference for me when downloading using my employers ISP.
I’ve had that happen on EndeavourOS but it was because of a corrupted ISO. Have you checked checksums?
I hate it, basically I have to force myself when I boot into windows to physically disconnect the RJ45 from the back, so it doesn’t replace the boot entries thru an update.
I’d run XFCE themed with Chicago95 in this everyday.