Hours to relink media

I am editing a documentary series and have a few thousand media assets in the project.

Premiere used to start and then do a quick relink of media (maybe 5 minutes) - now it takes a few hours. I’m on Version 26.01 right now - and I think I’ve tried every update through to 26.2 and they all do it.

I can’t try it on any of the Pr 25 versions because it won’t open the project file since it was most recently saved in 26.

All the files are on an external drive, and this worked fine until now.

I don’t even understand why it has to check the media at the start - why not just assume it is all there - and if it isn’t then that’s on the user to sort out and relink. Or at least give the option to bypass relinking at boot up.

This essentially makes Premiere unusable for me, and if there isn’t a quick solution there’s no point continuing to pay for this programme.

Has anyone solved this problem?