Lightroom classic very slow

Hi, Im running LRC 12.2.1 on a 2017 Imac retina 5k, 3.8ghz quad core, 64 gb ram, 2.12 tb hard drive with 1.5 tb free, running Ventura 13.2.1. I import all photos to an externial 5tb hard drive thats about half full.   The past few weeks  LRC has gotten extremely slow, it can take hours to upload a 128 gb memory card and when scrolling through the photos in the library or develop module it an be painstakingly slow and photos are constantly "loading". When editing and making adjustments there is a delay and I get the spoinning circle on the lower right, its never been this bad before and I dont think ive changed any settings, Im shooting with Nikon z9 and the raw files arfe large but I've been doing that for almost a year and the slowness is fairly recent. On import I am using embedded and sidecar with no smart previews, I've been diing it this way for years. Any suggestions on anythig I can check or try or change to speed things up?  Thank you.