Exactly, I see a lot of posts where people have been using Sonar for years and still have no idea about the file storage. These people often loose their work when a hard drive fails. 
Sonars default is not the best system as you'll end up with 4,000 wave files all mixed in that global audio folder...:( 
 
As Steve and Bob have said, you WANT your project and Audio within a folder. The same folder. That folder holds everything to do with your song, I even put my lyrics and track sheets , midi files etc,  everything in that songs folder.  
Only difference for me is I also have containment folders for albums. 
 
D drive - Album Name - Song Names - CWP-Audio folder - mid.  Doc. 
 
I'll back that whole album folder up at the end of the day to a 3rd internal drive and an external drive when needed ( often) . I date each folder too. 
 
Album Name 23-06 -2014
 
I'll end up with a bunch of these so I can always go back, I never do. And I only delete these backups when the album is finished and out the door on CD. I then only keep 3 complete copies of the very last mixes. Hard rives are cheap and huge.. 

The global audio drive is a holdover from the days when hard drives were expensive and multiple projects could "point" to the same files, like loops, thus saving drive space. 
 
I highly recommend this approach if you invent a time machine and return to 1995.  Otherwise, project folders are the best way to do. They organize the audio and project file the same folder, are easy to back up, and make it easy to differentiate among projects.

I was just thinking how hard it must have been back then when hard drives must have been still measured in MB. My first PC was 2001 and had a whopping 10 Gig drive.. That would last us 2 minutes these days. My Atari had a 20 MB that held 100's of Midi files no problem, but when they added audio to sequencing software it must have bee a struggle to work with. Glad I stuck to Digital tape medium through that period. 

Cactus Music
...you WANT your project and Audio within a folder. The same folder. That folder holds everything to do with your song, I even put my lyrics and track sheets , midi files etc,  everything in that songs folder...

I sometimes save plugin settings in another sub-folder within the project folder, especially if I have spent a lot of time tweaking something. These saved settings have also come in handy on occasions where I have needed to replace a DX plugin with its VST equivalent.

Kev999
I sometimes save plugin settings in another sub-folder within the project folder, especially if I have spent a lot of time tweaking something. These saved settings have also come in handy on occasions where I have needed to replace a DX plugin with its VST equivalent.

 

Kev999
I sometimes save plugin settings in another sub-folder within the project folder, especially if I have spent a lot of time tweaking something. These saved settings have also come in handy on occasions where I have needed to replace a DX plugin with its VST equivalent.

 
I thought this tip was well worth repeating 
 
Also while not quite as relevant these days, you can store MIDI sys ex within a Sonar project. Great for keeping external synth and signal processors data where you need it.

Anderton
Otherwise, project folders are the best way to do. They organize the audio and project file the same folder, are easy to back up, and make it easy to differentiate among projects.

I dunno, I prefer to organize my project files separately. Based on album, or band, or otherwise based on the CONTENT instead of having to slave myself to just being convenient for SONAR. I work on a lot of different things, and I like to have my own schema take precedent over SONAR's need to only be able to distinguish if the project file and audio are kept together. That's why I like project files in one place, and audio in another...but still organized by the project file...if that makes sense.

It only has to make sense to you - but it sounds like a convoluted mess.
 
It's not about 'control', it's about what makes sense.  
 
When I drive my car to the store, it is shorter to cut through the middle of the lake and a corn field, but that doesn't mean that flooring it and cranking a right turn at the boat ramp is a good choice.
 
I hope you find peace with it all, 
 
Bob Bone
 

...wicked
 
I dunno, I prefer to organize my project files separately. Based on album, or band, or otherwise based on the CONTENT instead of having to slave myself to just being convenient for SONAR. I work on a lot of different things, and I like to have my own schema take precedent over SONAR's need to only be able to distinguish if the project file and audio are kept together. That's why I like project files in one place, and audio in another...but still organized by the project file...if that makes sense.

You'll be happy to hear that everything you've said you want to do, you can do! 
 
Sonar's project folder structure is only a default - you can save any project file and any accompanying audio file folder anywhere you want, in any folder you create, with any name you want. 
 
When you "Save As...," you are presented with an option to choose the disk path for the project file itself and the audio. So for example, suppose you're working on an album called XYZ. You can create a folder called "XYZ Projects" and save all the projects to that folder. Then you can create a folder called "XYZ Audio" and have separate folders with the audio for each song ("XYZ Song 1," "XYZ Song 2," etc.) or a giant folder called "All the audio stuff for all the XYZ Songs" or whatever. 
 
The only caution with any storage scheme is that Sonar needs to know the file path in order to find the audio and project it needs to load. If you break the file path by doing something like moving the folders to a different hard drive, Sonar will not be able to find the project or audio. In that case, go to the new location and load the project. Sonar will say it can't find the audio and do you want to create an audio folder. If you say no, you can then browse for the existing folder, wherever it is.

robert_e_bone
It only has to make sense to you - but it sounds like a convoluted mess.

 
Really? That's odd because I think the other way is convoluted. When I search my project files I like to see them. Like, all of them. And just them. And if they're grouped by album, or by band, well then that just makes it that much easier. I just about never need to actually go drilling down into the audio folder of a project unless something is wrong. In fact, I shouldn't have to ever go drilling down unless something is wrong. 
 
As per Craig's point: yes, we can store things that way (I described)...I do store that way. But something since X1 has been wonky with the "global" audio folder setting and even though I have my projects still broken out like described, new recorded material gets dumped into the root "audio" folder.
 
And, it seems to play havoc with Cake's Clean Audio Folder command...a process so scary I never run it. In fact, I seem to recall the conventional wisdom is to "save as" and copy all the audio data over, then delete the original. That's why some better default options would be sweet...though I suppose I'm tangenting into better asset mgmt tools too...but hey I had my coffee this morning!:-)

See I told yas,, most people have a convoluted mess and are only lucky it works.
 
The per project folder option is the only thing that saves most people. But it would seem lot of folks still don't use this feature.
It's like putting the Tape reels in the storage room and the rest of the track sheets and stuff in the attic. Put it all in one place and you'll always know where it is.