Finder or other issue causing hang time

I use Mojave on a 2018 Mini. Suddenly i've noticed erratic things. I rebooted after an SMC reset, PRAM reset, disk utility first aid. I have an external HD that i "write" to - my internal HD is APFS formatted, the external is HFS+. I VERY regularly use the feature where you can just click on an audio file with the spacebar and playback the audio. Now, it is hanging indefinitely on a file when I do that. I ran Malwarebytes and it showed no corruption. I noticed that my external HD is randomly not mounting or showing up in Disk Utility. It does with a restart.. and then later for some reason isn't there. Is this some hardware issue? Just now when i thought of that i swapped the cable over to another USB 3.2 port, and the drive reappeared. Edit to add. I notice, if this 'preview' playback capability comes back, after so many uses, it seems it stops responding again - like... suddenly the next file i hit after a dozen of them in quick succession - just spirals with the gear icon indefinitely. And - in this instance - where i'm clicking thru audio files one by one to see what they are with a quick preview playback, the files were on the external drive. After encountering the hang, and closing out of it, the icon for the external HD just disappears from desktop and is not in the connected drive menu in Disk Utility. It is losing its mount, so to speak. Any reason to reinstall the System? Don't wanna bother if it wouldn't resolve the problem.

Thanks. If it's a drive, I'd much prefer it be the external rather than the internal. This is a Samsung 870 EVO.

By happenstance I was just planning to clone and replace it this week with a newer Samsung T7 'portable' 2TB. As I understand it the T7 should double my transfer speed via USB 3.2, on the 2018 Mini. Should be plenty fast for my audio production needs and I'm looking for improved latency.

I also have a Sam. 970 EVO 1TB internal drive on the way that i was going to put in a Sabrent enclosure on an identical Mini in my other studio. That could be a little faster but i'm limited to the 10gbps limit of the 3.2 USB port on the Mini in either case. I think i could get a different enclosure with TB connectivity for a faster speed on newer Macs. Someone in a forum suggested this 970 in the enclosure might be a bit faster than the T7 on the Mini, but not exactly sure why(?)