Over the last year of learning what not to do...I have deleted a couple of projects. I have a 16 bit 44.1 mix of both, but I would like a shot at remixing them. My system is backed up with paragon software so if I restore to a previous state I will get my old  projects back but lose the current ones. If I save all current projects as a bundle (cwb files) and then move them to an external drive, Restore my system and then move all the bundle files back to my projects hard drive...will that screw anything up? Will all the audio files still be there? Should I (not risk it) make do with what I have and move on?

I, personally, wouldn't use bundle files.  If they are corrupted, you lose everything.
 
Save as a project file, but tick "copy audio with project".  At least if .cwp file is corrupted, you still have the audio.
 
I think .cwb files became redundant when Cake came up with the copy audio function.

Bundles can be useful occasionally, but as the primary save format it's considered too unreliable.
Remember to use "Per Project Audio Folders" when saving as .cwp, so all the project audio is kept in one place instead of having it all in a mess with the audio of all your projects in the global audio folder.

Great advice so far. The important thing is to do your "save as" to a different location to where the restore will happen

I have restored many bundle files from 10 to 12 years ago with great success in Sonar X2a.
Originally it was .BUN files
Then at some point .CWB files
 Then, as discussed above, "Per Project Audio Folders" were created as a more dependable back-up for Cakewalk projects,
mostly because a project could always be re-built from the "audio" sub-folder files, if corrupted.
Apparently, some have found that older bundle files are subject to corruption, though it has seldom happened to me.
 
So definitely use  "Per Project Audio Folders" as a back-up system for your newer projects in X2a.

many of my bundles from days of yore are unopenable

Ditto... I have had probably close to 50% of the bundles from the past, carefully stored on CD, come up with a "file corrupted" message when I tried to open them several years later. Some open, some don't.
 
Save as projects, I have never had a project file fail to open.

Ok Thanks. I do save all audio per project, so I should be good there. I may try to move one to my external drive and then try and reload first just to make sure I don't lose everything.

Bundle files are no better or worst than any other file format. If one has a properly running system bundles files should work well indeed. 
 
 

Hi:
Bundle files is a wonderful way to get rid of all unwanted waves files that you no longer use.
By saving the song into a new folder still does not get rid of the wave files that you don't need.
Sometimes one of my song will go up to almost 2 gig, after playing and replaying different lines or instruments.
So I use the bundle format to save the song to get it back down to like 700 megabytes, and then reopen the bundle project and then resave as normal into a brand new folder.  Of course, after that, I delete the bundle file.
As far as I knwom this is the only way to reduce the file size.
A lot of threads had argued that since hard drives are so cheap now, that there is no need to do that.  I agree, but somehow, I like to see a real file size that reflects the actual size of that particular song.  And that's just me. Besides I truly believe that the more unwanted stuff that you have residing in your saved project can lead to corruption later on.
However and a big however, lately with X1 I have been having troubles with saving with bundle files.  Error after error.
A lot of people have asked about the clean audio project per that particular folder that your song resides in only, but cakewalk has not come up to that yet.  Now this CAP is scanning the whole computer.  Lots of time with you have like 3 hard drives with big capacity.
dan