Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

Is R-Studio loading time determined by the size of the attached disk drives or is it just slow to load?
Would it be quicker to attach large disks after loading the program?

If you're talking about the time R-Studio opens a logical disk/partition, please understand the following:
When R-Studio opens a disk, it deeply analyses its file system. If it's damaged or complex, or with a lot of previously deleted files, that time may be quite long.
Large disks usually, but not necessary, have quite complex file systems, that's why they may require more time for R-Studio to open then.
If you're talking about the initial startup of R-Studio, that time depends on how fast the disks respond to R-Studio, rather than their size. Connecting large disks when R-Studio is already running will not makes the things faster. You'll have to refresh the disks once the new disks have been connected, actually repeating startup disk listing.

With reference to what Alt has written

"that time depends on how fast the disks respond"

That is also referred to the health status of the drives that are plugged to the PC.

If one drive SMART analysis results bad, realistically that drive will respond slowly or it could either never respond at all (hanging on so many bad sectors)

As always, anybody that is going to deal with a drive subject of a data recovery process, must reason on the cause of the "data loss"

If the drive has suffered one mechanical hitting, bumping, drop that is not matter of "data loss" , instead, it is matter of damaged drive and powering it on, will definitely kill it. The same if it has begun making noises different than the usual it has always made. In these cases if you care your files, you'll keep it powered OFF and ask to some lab (equipped in the proper manner, generally a data recovery lab) to safely process the drive and hopefully to recover it.

Wise people will understand what above

Also dealing with a drive with bad SMART values will many times end up with killing it, for that explanation, read points 1) and 2) in my signature.
About SMART analysis, R-Studio provides a nice built in function.

Kind regards