Duplicates, fake-320s, scattered folders — on a Synology, QNAP, Unraid, or any SMB share. Removed files stay restorable on the drive itself, never silently deleted.
A NAS is the natural home for a serious music collection — and the place where most cleanup tools quietly break. The reason is a Windows platform quirk almost nobody documents: network locations have no Recycle Bin. When a tool tries to "move to trash" a duplicate on your Synology or QNAP share, Windows has nowhere to put it — the operation fails with a cryptic error ("the system cannot find the file specified"), whether the share is mapped as a drive letter or accessed by UNC path. Tools respond to this in one of two bad ways: they error out and leave the job unfinished, or they permanently delete your files without the safety net you expected. Music Library Doctor was built to handle exactly this case.
Supported today
Rekordbox · Serato DJ · VirtualDJ (incl. Favorite Folders) on Windows 10+ and macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel).
MLD detects that a file lives on a network volume and adapts instead of failing. Where the OS Recycle Bin isn't available, removed files are moved — atomically, on the same volume, so even a 100 GB cleanup takes seconds and no data crosses the network twice — into a visible ".MLD Trash" folder at the root of the share, preserving the original folder structure. A manifest.json inside records where every file came from, so a restore is a simple move back. The summary screen tells you exactly what went where. Your media server (Plex, Navidrome, Roon, Jellyfin) simply rescans and sees the cleaned library — no plugin, no integration, no surprises.
Windows doesn't provide a Recycle Bin for network locations. Any tool that relies on the standard "move to Recycle Bin" API fails on a NAS share — typically with error 0x80070002, "the system cannot find the file specified" — even though the file is clearly there. It fails identically for mapped drives and UNC paths, because Windows resolves both to the same network form.
It moves them into an ".MLD Trash" folder on the NAS itself — a same-volume move that completes instantly and keeps the files fully restorable. A manifest file records every original path. You empty the folder when you're ready, on your own schedule.
They're independent safety nets that stack nicely. If you've enabled the Recycle Bin on your Synology shared folder (Control Panel → Shared Folder → Edit), anything you later delete from .MLD Trash over SMB lands in Synology's #recycle too — belt and suspenders.
Any NAS your computer can mount as a network share: Synology, QNAP, Unraid, TrueNAS, Asustor, a Windows or Linux file server, even a router USB share. MLD works at the file-system level, so the NAS brand doesn't matter.
Scan speed depends on your network — a wired gigabit connection scans roughly as fast as a local drive for metadata, while acoustic fingerprinting streams audio and benefits from faster links. Results are cached, so re-scans after a cleanup are quick.
Yes. If you also use DJ software (Rekordbox, Serato, VirtualDJ), MLD re-points every playlist reference to the kept copy before anything moves — a set you played months ago still finds its tracks. In pure Folder Library mode there are no playlists to break.
Free tier covers scanning and detection. Pro is a one-time lifetime license — paid once, no subscription. Current founding pricing is on the homepage.
