Why does explorer.exe take a while to start?

Question

Windows

Recently, on a computer (Lenovo Z710 laptop, Win 10 Pro 64x 2004), the file manager or any operations to call it (opening it by clicking on the icon, saving or loading files from the browser, etc.) began to be performed with a huge pause before the response to the action. Sometimes it goes up to minutes. At the same time, after opening the explorer.exe window, there is no slowdown, operations occur without delay. Sometimes it seems that disabling USB on which several hard drives are hanging helps to eliminate the delay ("hanging" windows start to appear one after another), but if USB is not connected at all, similar delays are also possible. Inside the device, there is an SSD in place of a standard disk and an HDD in place of a CD. There is nothing suspicious in the processes.

UPD: problem with opening explorer.exe for the first time after being idle or after working in other programs.

Answer 1

One of the disks is failing. The response time from such a disk increases, and there are delays with file operations.