The block has been locked in Bitcoin Core. I need help

I have Bitcoin Core version 25 and the blockchain is fully synchronized. Open the core every 2-3 days to synchronize with the latest blocks. For the past few days, when syncing the latest block, the block has been randomly freezing, almost like a core freeze. If I shut down and reopen the core without seeing the spinning circle, the blocks are synchronized. Typically there will be two pauses before successfully synchronizing to the most recent block. I used to be able to do this without freezing.

What causes this problem?

I looked at the debug log. After the last synchronized block there are the following parts: Skipped DNS seeding, terminating the dnsseed thread. Mempool transactions fetched from disk: 2876 successful, 359 failed, 0 already present, 0 waiting for install broadcast. Does this help someone?

This is the only thing that shows up in the debug log whenever it hangs. The only difference is the number of disk failures or successes.

Also important to note is that I am running the core from an SSD and had to switch the format from ExFAT to APFS after the Mac Sonoma update a few months ago. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Should I re-download the latest Bitcoin Core? I don’t know what to do and this makes me not want to run node at all…

Also, is it safe to delete everything from the sdd if I have to start from scratch and delete a core from the sdd and start over from the genesis block? I don’t use a core wallet as I have everything in my hardware wallet.

Any expert help would be greatly appreciated. I’m not a coder or computer science expert so this is already a hassle for me, but I’m trying. I posted this a few days ago but didn’t get a solution and this thread goes into a bit more detail.