I’ve never been a real plasma user (played around with it sure but never more than a week or something) and have been using GNOME since ~3.10 the whole workflow is just ingrained in my mind and simply works. So I’d be happy to hear how you’re doing on Plasma even if I don’t see myself switching anytime soon.
I had an external HDD that I was using for years. Some of that time it was attached to a Server basically running 24/7 definitely dropped that thing a couple of times. That HDD has been out of use for years now but I’m sure I could just plug it in tomorrow and it would spin up fine. HDDs can last forever untill they don’t.
So Backups! And don’t worry about the rest.
Also as others said if you’re interested how long and hard it’s actually been working check out the smart data if there are any fail criteria you might wanna get a new one just to avoid restoring from Backup but if all’s green just let it keep chugging until it doesn’t and remember Backups!
I feel that. I’ve used Linux before systemd but when I went into the “nitty gritty” by using arch systemd had just been implemented and everything I learned about startup services init etc. was systemd based. When I started my career working in servers they were redhat/CentOS so still systemd and when I switched jobs Debian already had made the switch so (most of) the systems at my new job were also systemd based. Of course I learned the basics of init files and even some rc.d but systemd still makes the most sense to me and like you say it’s “comfy”.