Trying to decide between booting from SSD on Raspberry Pi 3b+ or upgrading

I have already had one SD card crap out on me, and my current one is starting to slow down now so I’m worried it will soon, too. I also noticed when I made a pretty complicated light controller on NodeRed that everything got really slow, and I just would really like a faster system.

I don’t think my CPU/memory usage is the issue because it never really gets above 50%, so I’m pretty sure it’s the SD card. I bought a Kingston 120gb SSD and a Sabrent SSD to USB converter, both of which I saw recommended elsewhere for Raspberry Pi 3b+. I followed this tutorial to get everything set up, but it wouldn’t work. I was getting this error:

I spent a really long time trying to get this to work over this weekend, and have been going through the forums trying to find answers. At this point I’m considering returning the SSD and getting something else to run HA on. I looked into an Intel Nuc and the Odroid, but they both look like overkill. I would just do the Raspberry Pi 4 because I read that it is much easier to get is to work with SSD, but I can’t find them in stock anywhere.

Basically I’m just looking for recommendations on what I should do. Is there a simple fix for the issue I’m running into? I haven’t been able to find any straightforward answers to my issue. Or should I just get new hardware and use the 3b+ for something else?