ITunes on iPhone 14 not working quite right after forgetting to plug external drive into Windows PC

Two and a half years ago, I purchased the iPhone 14 and loaded iTunes on it (as well as loading iTunes for Windows on my tower PC with a 1 TB SSD hard drive). I have approximately 3 TB of music (in the form of mp3 files) ripped to an external hard drive. I pull songs from that external hard drive into the iTunes on my PC which I then synch to my iPhone 14. These mp3 files were all ripped from my extensive CD, LP and mini disc collections. Because of the large number of files, I need to keep them on a 5 TB external drive. It all has worked fantastic for the last two and a half years. Then, one week ago, I forgot to plug my external hard drive back into my PC, and then opened iTunes. After I accidentally opened iTunes (with the hard drive disconnected) I clicked on a song to play (in an iTunes playlist that I opened) and it gave me a message that iTunes could not find the file(s). I quickly realized what I had done and then plugged the hard drive back into the PC (I had unplugged it the night before, after receiving a tornado warning along with massive amounts of lightning in my area). However, it seems I was too late. My iTunes on my PC still works fine, but it does not on my iPhone 14. I could play any song and any playlist on my iTunes for Windows software with no trouble. So, after checking my iTunes for Windows and all seemed well, I updated a playlist and then synched my iPhone. After synching the iPhone, some songs (only on my iPhone) would not play. I could still see them, and they looked okay (not greyed-out), but when I played a list of songs, the iPhone might play 10 songs on the list and then skip the next 4 songs and then play the next 6 songs but then skip 2 songs, and so on (shuffle was not on). I then tried to press my finger on the skipped songs, to play them, and they would not play. So, I assumed that some of the files on my phone were corrupted. I then deleted those files that were being skipped from my iPhone and then re-synched it with the Windows iTunes. However, after I synched my iPhone, the same songs were still being skipped, so, I deleted them out of iTunes on my Windows PC and then re-added them, and then re-synced the phone. Initially this seemed to help but then I noticed other songs, that worked before, were now being skipped. It seems to have affected all of the songs that were on the playlist that I had opened, when the hard drive was not attached. It also seems to have affected the whole album that I took the songs from for the creation of the affected playlist. The affected playlist is 1.2 days in length, and I don't want to have to delete everything and start from scratch as I have early 45,000 songs loaded into iTunes as well as over 100 playlists. My iPhone has 1 TB storage, and is nearly 600 GB free, so I don't think there are any storage issues. As I mentioned at the start, iTunes works perfect on my PC, playing all songs and all playlists perfectly. It is only problematic with my iPhone. I am including a copy of my advanced properties on my PC iTunes, but I am not sure why things worked so well, for so long, until failing to plug my external hard drive in for 20 seconds. Any help will be greatly appreciated. I love my music, and I love taking it with me wherever I travel in the world. Also, I blanked out the PC username in the path below with a black marker. I kept the iTunes library in the local C: drive under music (as suggested, but I pull the vast majority of songs into iTunes from an external hard drive (mapped as the J: drive). Thank you.