[hltetmo, twrp]Failed to mount '/efs' (inalid argument), efs is empty but imei is ok

running alliance rom, there are a LOT of posts with this problem, but i'm having trouble making sense of the solutions. i had been running jedi elite kk 1.1 and philz touch for the last 2.5 years, but a few weeks ago i started getting this factory mode error at startup, turning off wifi (and i think bluetooth). the fixes that i found were to go into efs and change an argument to ON. this is when i first noticed my efs was empty, checked with another file manager and it's still empty, so i flashed alliance rom and the problem persisted, found out philz is dead so i changed to twrp, actually haven't gotten the error yet BUT twrp tells me it can't mount /efs (first saw the the message when i flashed supersu 2.76), so now i'm scared.

I've checked /efs with 2 root file explorers and termux, it appears to be very empty. If i fully wipe my internal and flash a stock rom would that restore the efs or am i just living on borrowed time?