I ran W10 on a hdd for three years since 2016. It worked. This was a desktop attached to a network so all file storage was elsewhere. Where I believe I ran into serious slowdowns was indexing, primarily emails and usually shortly after restarting the computer. I never noticed an issue with the start menu.

I'm now using an SSD on the replacement with a faster processor. Startup is quicker, and it's more responsive but not drastically so. The new SSD drives with the latest interfaces benchmark very fast, but I'm not sure that means that much in real life for my usage. That said, I don't expect to ever use a regular mechanical hard drive again.