If you are concerned about HDDs failing, I would try the nvme instead. For me, I have a 1tb external HDD connected to my server-laptop. It’s definitely an eye-sore but my server is basically on the shelf out of the way and I SSH into the server 99% of the time unless it goes down.
The HDD is not blazingly fast by any means, but I stream jellyfin videos which is great. There is maybe a 1-2 second pause before a movie starts, but there are no noticeable buffering after, even @ 1.75 speed
Is element on the main profile or are you waiting for notifications from secondary profiles? Also, might not be related, but my messaging notifications w/ GrapheneOS has gotten worse in the past week or so (Google Messaging hasn’t always alerted to new messages until I open the app and it pulls them) so it might be a Graphene thing as well.