Music playlist on external drive malfunction issues

I've experienced a number of quirks with my "Music" library on an external SSD, but I'll focus on the worst. My library was set up on the external drive so all my "Music" folders and files exist there ("media", "automatically add", library(ies),"). All my music (about 450 Gigs) shows up in the media/music folder nested with the rest. However increasingly when I play something in music I get the message that the file cannot be found. If I choose "Find It" the computer seems to look in all the wrong places, starting with the system drive in my computer. But if I merely look for the file in the nested "music" folder, there it is. When I double clicked on the file name in the media folder, it started playing. Back in the "Music" app window I saw the song name that was playing next to the same one that was there initially. I let the album play, which went well at first, but then it skipped two cuts on the album. When the next album (alphabetically) started, it started on the third cut. It had skipped the first two cuts of the album, which of course it said it couldn't find. But they are right where it should have looked. WTF?