Steam problem?

My gaming laptop has too little space for Ark…

That's why I got an external ssd hard drive with 1TB and thunderbolt. If I have ark installed, I can play the game, but as soon as I unplug the hard drive and plug it in again, I have to download ark again.

Ie every time I pull out the hard drive and plug it in again, I can no longer play ark, even though the game is on the hard drive.

I always have to reinstall it.

Does steam not like external hard drives?

Maybe this will help

Steam does not find the ARK files automatically.

You have to enter the directory in Steam, then it will work too.

Nah, I know that it works. But why does it work more after unplugging and unplugging net that is my question