on my private computer with 5800x3d 32gb and nvme opening a new explorer window is a tad slower. on my work device with i5-8350u and 16gb logging in and loading the core explorer task takes ages, but then during normal use i dont feel any further slowdowns
It is easy to get to these drive self reporting data, but reading it can be tricky.
For Windows there are GUI tools like https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/, that make all those values understandable even for people without much computer background.
For Linux the story is a bit different. Most current desktop environments do carry some functionality to read the S.M.A.R.T. data from the drives and display these data to the user. The user then has to find a way to interprete these seeminly random numbers. For things like the amound of written data to a drive (relevant for SSD) you have to pull out a calculator. Maybe there are also easily unterstandable GUI tools for Linux, I just haven’t found them.