It’s a happy accident. They were working on a diabetes treatment, which they did develop. The side effects included weight loss, so it started to get prescribed off-label for that. Then they did the required testing to get it approval for weight-loss.

It works because it is a fake hormone that mimics GLP-1, a hormone that is involved with appetite regulation. When it binds to the GLP-1 receptors it causes more insulin to be released in response to sugars which lowers blood sugars. The weight loss doesn’t come from that, though, it comes from the appetite suppression.

A lot of people seem to think you can eat as much as you want while you’re taking it. That’s technically true, but really because you won’t want to eat much.

They switched distros and still had issues. That and the general slowdown with high disk usage is a classic sign of failing drives.

Chasing hardware issues by playing with software only wastes time, so ruling out the hardware first is a good idea

Looks like failing storage. You may be able to initiate a SMART self-test from the BIOS, or you can use the manufacturers tools. Seatools works on non-seagate drives and has a live USB option.

Do the short test first, if it passes, do the long one to confirm. Short test takes about 15 minutes usually, the long one can take a couple of hours.