Have you enabled forwarding on the IPv4 stack and adjusted the firewall to allow traffic to be routed?

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-and-configure-an-openvpn-server-on-ubuntu-20-04#step-8-adjusting-the-openvpn-server-networking-configuration

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-and-configure-an-openvpn-server-on-ubuntu-20-04#step-9-firewall-configuration

When dealing with EFI, UEFI, it is not as simple as just cloning the partitions. You will also need to update the EFI partition to indicate the new GUID of the new SSD, else it will be repeatedly attempting to boot from the old SSD.

As for the disks not being visible, where it it not visible? If partitions already exist on a hard drive, it is not empty, the Standard Install option of Windows installer will not display that drive as usable for an OS installation. You must first delete any/all existing partitions using Custom Install mode during Windows install.

Additionally, Intel Rapid Storage Technology could cause issues with your drives if you attempted to use this. This is a RAID/Redundancy feature which allows multiple drives to be setup in “mirror” mode, in order to keep a backup copy. Doing so will result in wiping of the drives, and will result in the drives appearing as a single storage system to the OS. I wouldn’t be surprised of an Intel Rapid Storage setup drive is not eligible for OS installation.

The laptop does not support a monitor or charging over its USB-C port so this will limit your options to USB-A docks. This will result in your monitor not running off of the Graphics Card, as it is over USB-A. Take a look at the comment by /u/mikeinanaheim2

The number of the GPU is irrelevant to performance/usage, if that is what you are ultimately questioning. Whether your “more powerful” GPU is GPU # 0/1/2/3/4 is not of any concern.

I would suggest replacing the SATA cable and reseating the cable on both ends. If the drive still does not display or work properly, you have a faulty motherboard that needs to be replaced.

The toll taken on the drive during re-installation of the OS is nothing in comparison to normal operation of the computer. The installation of the OS results in <10GB of data written. Over the course of usage of a PC for a week, it will go through >10GB of writes, if not much more.

The suggested method of re-installing windows is always from an external media. Usage of the built-in reset may be quicker, however, it is not “completely resetting”. (You can rebuild a house around the existing framing, new walls/plumbing/electrical, but you’re reusing the framing. If you want a “new house”, you need to start from an empty lot)