Missing Files in Serato and Rekordbox: How DJs Relocate, Fix and Prevent Them

Why tracks go missing in the first place

A "missing" track is almost never a deleted track. Your DJ software stores each track as a file path, and all your cues, loops, beatgrids, play counts and playlist memberships hang off that path. Change the path and the software loses the file, even though the audio is sitting right there on your drive.

The usual suspects:

• You moved or renamed a folder in Finder or Explorer, for example tidying Downloads/Promos into Music/House.
• You renamed files outside your DJ app, so track01.mp3 became Artist - Title.mp3 and the database still points at the old name.
• A new external drive or a changed drive letter. Windows can hand your music drive a different letter, and macOS can mount a volume under a new name. Every path on that drive breaks at once.
• A new laptop. You copied the music over, but into a different folder structure than before.
• A cloud drive that offloaded files. Sync tools that free up space by keeping files online-only can leave your DJ app pointing at a placeholder instead of real audio.
• A format change. You converted WAV to MP3 (or the other way round) and deleted the originals, so the old path with the old extension no longer exists.

Each app shows it differently: Serato and Rekordbox flag missing tracks in the library, and in Lexicon a missing track gets an orange triangle in the track browser.

Why "just re-import the folder" is the wrong fix

The tempting fix is to drag the music folder back in and move on. Don't. A re-import creates new library entries at the new paths, while the old, broken entries stay behind. Depending on the app, the prep that was attached to the old entry (hot cues, memory cues, loops, beatgrid edits, play counts, ratings) does not follow the new one, and your playlists and crates still point at the dead entries.

The result is a library with duplicates, broken playlists and tracks that look prepared in one place and bare in another. Relocating is always the better route: you point the existing entry at the file's new location and everything attached to it stays intact.

Fixing missing files in Serato and Rekordbox

Serato DJ Pro: Relocate Lost Files

Serato's tool is called Relocate Lost Files and lives in the Files panel. According to Serato's support article:

• Clicking Relocate Lost Files searches all attached drives. On a big library or a messy drive that can take a long time.
• To speed it up, drag the folder that holds the missing tracks onto the Relocate button so Serato only searches there.
• The Location column shows where Serato expects each file to be, which tells you which folder to search.
• Serato recommends turning off Show iTunes Library (Setup, Library + Display) before relocating, to avoid duplicate entries afterwards. You can switch it back on when you're done.

The catch: Serato matches on the file name. If you renamed the files as well as moving them, Relocate Lost Files will not find them. Older Serato guidance says the same: the tracks are relocated as long as they are in that folder and their names have not changed.

Rekordbox: Display All Missing Files and Relocate

In Rekordbox, open File > Display All Missing Files to get the missing file manager, which lists every track it can't find. Missing tracks carry a [!] mark in the collection. From there, per the rekordbox FAQ:

• Relocate: select a track, click Relocate, browse to the file and click Open. You can also right-click a flagged track in the Collection and choose Relocate.
• Auto Relocate: searches the folders you set under Preferences > Advanced > Database > Auto Relocate Search Folders. Add your music folders there first, then let it run.
• Delete: if a file really is gone, it stays in the list until you click Delete to remove it from the Collection.

Both tools work, but both are per app. If you play Serato at home and Rekordbox in the club, you fix the same problem twice, in two different ways.

Fixing it once with Lexicon

Lexicon handles this in its Find Lost Tracks / Relocate feature (full details in the manual). There are two ways in.

The easy way: right-click Relocate. Select your missing tracks, right-click and choose Relocate. The option only appears when at least one selected track is missing.

• One track: you can point it at any file. If that file already exists in your Lexicon library, you choose which entry to keep; the other is removed and replaced in all your playlists by the one you kept, so nothing breaks.
• Multiple tracks: you pick a folder, and Lexicon searches it, including all subfolders, for matching file names and relocates them automatically.

The advanced way: the Find Lost Tracks utility. Find it in the top menu bar under Utility. You set a source and a target folder, and Lexicon swaps the source part of each path for the target. With source D:/Music and target E:/Music, the track D:/Music/House/track.mp3 becomes E:/Music/House/track.mp3. You choose whether it applies only to missing tracks or to all tracks. This is the right tool when you know exactly what changed, like a drive letter. A few details:

• You can only relocate to locations that don't already exist in Lexicon.
• You can set a new file extension, which covers the WAV-to-MP3 case: set the extension to MP3 and relocate to the new files. Our guide on changing file extensions without losing cue points walks through it.
• Lexicon can create a backup automatically before changing track locations. Leave that on.

To see every missing file at a glance, create a smartlist with the File Missing rule. Lexicon re-checks whether files exist every 5 minutes at most; restarting Lexicon or opening a track's Edit popup forces a re-check straight away.

Then push the fix to your DJ apps with a Full Sync (see Sync). A Full Sync makes your DJ app match Lexicon, so the corrected paths land in Rekordbox, Serato, Traktor or Engine DJ and the stale entries go. One warning from the manual: a Full Sync also removes tracks and playlists that exist only in your DJ app and were never imported into Lexicon, so import from your DJ app first.

Running Lexicon on two computers with different drive letters or mount points? Look at Local Path Mappings (Lexicon settings, under Advanced, Ultimate plan) before you relocate anything. It tells a secondary Lexicon where to find your music without rewriting the paths in your database. See Local Path Mappings.

If you are stuck on a relocate that won't take, our troubleshooting guide Unable to relocate files covers the common causes.

Making sure it never happens again

Missing files are a process problem. A few habits fix the process:

1. Pick one music folder structure and stick to it. One root folder (on one drive) that everything lives under. New music goes in, nothing gets shuffled around by hand.
2. Never move or rename files in Finder or Explorer. Do it in a tool that updates the database at the same time. Our guide on moving and renaming files automatically shows how to do it in Lexicon while keeping your cues and playlists intact.
3. Process new music through Incoming. In Lexicon, tracks from the watch folder land on the Incoming page. When you mark them done, Lexicon can move them into your Target Folder, with optional subfolders (for example by genre) and a file rename pattern like %artist% - %title%. Files end up in the right place with the right name from day one. The Incoming page is on the Essential and Ultimate plans; the watch folder is Ultimate.
4. Full Sync after any move. Whenever file locations change, a Full Sync clears the old paths from your DJ apps. A partial sync won't.
5. Back up before big changes. A Lexicon database backup takes seconds and covers your tags, cue points, playlists and settings.
6. Keep DJ music out of online-only cloud folders, or make sure those files are always kept on the device.

Get the structure right once, let your library tool do the moving and renaming, and missing files become something you fix in a minute after buying a new drive, not something you discover at a gig.