Why does it take ages to start & load with my i5 6600K?

I believe the first time you install something through the launcher, you’re given the option to pick a directory but it will continue to use that directory from then on. I will say however, after having the Launcher on my SSD and then moving it to my HDD due to space reasons on my work PC, I haven’t noticed a single difference in performance. Disk usage isn’t usually the bottleneck so you likely wouldn’t see much of a difference, if any.