On screen it says "loading disks and partition information" but this process is taking time to load. Is this normal? I do have quite a lot of files/folders.
Hello and welcome to the forums!
The "Loading disks and partitions information" stage might take long if there are many disk devices connected to your computer, specifically removable USB drives, which contain file system errors. In most cases disconnecting such devices will resolve these issues.
Hope this helps!