TuneVault never deletes files from your backup automatically. That's a deliberate safety decision — if a file disappears from your live station, the backup copy stays put, ready to rescue you if the deletion was a mistake.
But over time, this means your backup accumulates files that no longer exist in your station. Old promos that were retired. Jingles you replaced. Test recordings you deleted months ago. These orphan files aren't hurting anything, but they do take up space — and on a station with years of history, that space can add up.
The Maintenance tab lets you see exactly what's in your backup that's no longer in your station, and decide what to do about it.
Before you rush to delete everything, consider: orphan files are your last line of defense. They're the files that exist only in your backup. If you accidentally deleted something from your station three weeks ago and didn't notice, the orphan copy in your backup is the only version left. That's exactly the scenario TuneVault was built for.
A good rule of thumb: don't delete orphan files just because they're there. Delete them when you're certain you don't need them — when you recognize them as genuinely retired content, not as files that went missing by accident.
If you're unsure about a file, leave it. Disk space is cheap. Recovering a deleted file you needed is not.
Click the Maintenance tab. TuneVault automatically scans the selected backup destination and compares it against your live Station folder. Every file that exists in the backup but not in the station appears in the list.
If you have multiple destinations, use the "Scan destination:" dropdown to choose which backup to examine. Each destination is independent — orphan files may differ between them depending on when each was last synced.
The summary line at the top shows the total count and size of orphan files — for example, "23 orphan files, 1.4 GB total." This gives you an immediate sense of how much space could be reclaimed.
Click any column header to sort the list:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Path | The full path within the Station folder structure. Useful for finding files by category (Music, Promos, Jingles, etc.). |
| Filename | Just the file name. Handy for spotting specific tracks or recordings. |
| Size | How much space the file uses. Sort by size to find the biggest space hogs first. |
| Modified | When the file was last changed. Sort by date to find the oldest orphans — files that have been sitting untouched the longest are the safest candidates for removal. |
Click a column header once to sort ascending. Click again to reverse the order.
Check the box next to each file you want to remove. Use the "All" checkbox to select or deselect everything at once — useful when you want to remove most of the list and only need to uncheck a few keepers.
Click Delete Selected in the lower-right corner. TuneVault shows a confirmation dialog telling you exactly how many files will be removed and how much space will be freed.
Deletion is permanent. Once an orphan file is removed from the backup, it cannot be recovered — by TuneVault or by anyone else. The file no longer exists in your station, and after deletion, it won't exist in your backup either. Make sure you're comfortable with that before clicking Delete.
You don't need to run maintenance on any particular schedule. Here's a practical approach:
Maintenance only affects the backup destination you're currently viewing. If you have multiple destinations, each one accumulates its own orphan files independently. You can maintain them separately or on different schedules.