Why not split the difference and do both. Hdd for storage and SSD for services/containers. To help with the power load/performance hit I’d recommend using a usb to sata adapter that has external power. Overall though it sounds like a micro optipl x would be great for you. They’re cheap, more powerful, but still sip power, and usually can fit nvme and 2.5" drives together.
the HR drone could’ve probably explained it better, but it’s possible for the background blur effect to distort a close up img on camera of a document, such as for I9. I recently went through a verification of my documents and had to do the same thing, except I made the call to unblur and immediately my docs were verifiable via camera.
Likely policy is to ask for blur effects to be disabled to remove the possibility of interference in be able to actually see/verify docs.