Nexus won't load my mods after an accidental external hard drive disconnect.

[pyancey1]

Before I start, the requirements; I use the up-to-date version of Vortex, the problem doesn't seem game-related, and I include some of the steps I've taken in the description of the problem. 
Hello all, after a disconnect of my external hard drive, I've run into an issue that spans all of my modded games. I plugged the external drive back in, but when I go to deploy the mods, Vortex claims that they are redunant and overwritten, but a quick check at LOOT shows me that, in reality, most of them are not in the load order anymore at all. (In Starfield's case, Creations are still there, and in Skyrim's case, a few odd plugins seemed to be unaffected). I made sure the staging folder for each is correct (it is) and that it is on the same drive as the game (it is), but Vortex won't load them. The deployment method is stuck on Move Deployment (experimental). Because this is the same issue between both Starfield and my Skyrim SE load orders, I figured it was some kind of problem with Vortex.
After doing a bit of research, I've seen that some games need to be installed on the /C drive of my computer, (which doesn't have enough space for them), is that the issue I'm running into here? Another possibility is that I've seen that the external drive has to have a file formatting system or something, which I don't think it has, but installing one would require a clean drive, so I want to make sure I know more before deleting my 100s of gigs of games. The thing is, these were all working perfectly before my disconnect, so I'm not sure how any of this tracks.
I would appreciate any advice, and if extra information is required, please let me know!

[ChemBoy1]

1. So you disconnected the external drive while Vortex was open?
2. Do you store both the games and mod staging folders on the external drive?
3. Is your external drive formatted as NTFS? You absolutely need to do that if you are using it to run programs like Vortex.

[pyancey1]

1. Yes
2. Yes. 
3. Nope XD I suppose that would be the problem then, I've never used such a large external drive before but hey knowing what to do is most of the battle. Could it be anything else, or is that likely the issue? Like i said, somehow it was working perfectly fine before I screwed it up XD thanks for the reply! 

[ChemBoy1]

The lack of NTFS formatting is definitely the issue. Was just talking with another user here on the forum that had a similar setup with an external drive not formatted in NTFS. 

I would highly recommend reformatting your external drive. if you have drive laying around you can backup your files, reformat the drive, then copy the files back to it. 

[pyancey1]

Thanks for the advice! It worked perfectly for Skyrim, and while Starfield still doesn't work I was planning on resetting all of it anyway (I think that problem has something to do with the data folder thing) so maybe clearing all mods and starting over in vortex would do it.