ENTIRE staging folder shows as ONE mod in vortex.

[mohawk32]

I recently had a bad horsey problem that ended with me completely reinstalling windows and wiping every app and program from my C drive.  Vortex of course was one of those programs.  My games are all on different drives, so I didn't lose game files, mod files, staging folders, anything like that.  After re installing Vortex, I quickly found out it was an absolute pain in the ass to set my game back up.  Requiring empty staging folders, forcing purges, just all around crap.  I have 1.08TB of (Not just downloaded and installed, but carefully hand placed, and creatively altered content throughout, my own edits) Mods.  I absolutely refuse to purge my work, Vortex won't re install MY work, it will overwrite MY work with original mods.  Anyway, I ended up temporarily removing my vortex.deployment.json, deleted EVERY "__folder_managed_by_vortex" file (all 15,793 of them), let it "purge" nothing, and tested that I could finally deploy a new mod.  So, basically, I made Vortex think ALL the mods in my data folder are just vanilla game files that it needs not worry about...  And then I noticed a "Mod" in the Mods section of vortex called "Fallout4" with a size of 293.21GB... It's the staging folder and all it's contents... I forgot that in the midst of trying to set things up, I made a new staging folder for Vortex, deleted it after setup, and renamed my old one to take it's place.  So, by doing this, I have saved my entire mod depolyment and all of my custom work which was reflected in my staging folder as ONE mod.  Recovery is a pain that I wish was a little easier with more info on the subject.