iMac won't wake from overnight sleep with new external Samsung T7 SSD

This issue with my mac not waking up only happens from OVERNIGHT SLEEP. I can use my mac throughout the day, with no issues occurring after waking from sleep multiple times each day. But for some reason when I try waking my mac in the morning after it has slept overnight...I just get the spinning wheel after I put in my log-in password. I end up having to just restart my mac each morning, because the wheel never stops spinning.

Something is being triggered from overnight sleep, that is not being triggered by sleep during the day?

Here's some basic history & my troubleshooting steps:

My internal HD recently failed on my 2017 mac. So I just bought a new 4 TB Samsung T7 external SSD, formatted it, set it as my Startup Disk and installed my data from a Time Machine backup, etc.

The install on my T7 SSD was a success, but I immediately started having random freezing issues, so after some research I made the following recommended changes in Energy Saver:

'Prevent computer from sleeping automatically' - CHECKED box

'Put hard disks to sleep' - UNCHECKED box

'Wake for network access' - UNCHECKED box

'Enable Power Nap' - UNCHECKED box

Next I made changes via the Terminal:

sudo pmset -a disksleep 0

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

Then I...

Reset the SMC.

Reset the NVRAM.

'Unmounted' my internal mac HD in safe mode.

Reinstalled my macOS from safe mode.

I checked my startup programs to see if anything else might be causing the wake-up issue, but there was nothing unusual.

I've also run Disk Utility multiple times...both from standard and safe mode with no errors identified.

At this point, I don't know what else to try?? Any help from the community is much appreciated!

BTW: I know there are 3rd party programs (Amphetamine) that can manipulate power settings for a mac to possibly fix this, but I really don't want to go down that road unless absolutely necessary.