Same here, I have still got a MacBook Air from 2011, and a more recent Pro. The Toshiba was such pants that it used up nearly all its memory just running the anti virus software - A Dell something or other went all Blue Screen of Death on me as well. And which is best - Hard Drive or SSD drive ?
NVME SSD or M.2 if your device will support it. If not then a decent ssd. My PC has a m.2 nvme drive and it pisses all over my SSDs. Have a look around though as the well known names aren't always the best. My crucial actually performs a bit better than my samsung, and it was cheaper I have a nvme m.2 in the laptop as well, boot time is seconds and handles my virtual machines without a whimper. Mind you it has an i7 with 16gb of ram and so even with it's 4k display it flies. Oh and it cost under £1500 Don't bother with spinning rust drives, they may have larger capacity but they are like Harley's: noisy and slow As for the subjects of OS I spend more time in Linux these days and just dual boot windows for the stuff that needs it.
How much work is it to transfer everything from a Mac HDD to an SSD if I were to go down that route too?
Not sure what software there is for Mac but just have a look for disk cloning/imaging. I know loads of ways for PCs but not Mac, but on a PC/Laptop it is pretty simple. Of course Apple have probably made it difficult to remove a laptop drive, and you will need some specialist tools, but a youtube search will probably show you someone doing it.
I assume you back up your mac using Time Machine?? If you do, you could simply restore from your back up to the New SSD! Simples
Thank you everyone for the replies and as said its good to see all the good advice and everyone offering their personal experience and input. I will be looking into my options over the next few weeks and will keep this updated once I make a decision. I also need to take into account the planned first property buying early next year so any significant spend will eat what little money I have for a deposit
There are kits out there for installing a second drive in Macbooks in replacement of the optical drive
