What is the best way to archive files, in terms of space-saving? I thought there was a way to save only the audio that is actually used in the project, and not keeping deleted audio or the parts of audio files that are not used.
But the Help file is a little unspecific about it.

What I do (might not be the best method, but it works!) 

I re-save my project to a different folder, making sure I checked the box: COPY ALL AUDIO WITH PROJECT

then it saves only audio files used in current project, 

then I delete the original project folder

I guess it ends about the same as saving a bundle, but for some reasons, I fear saving all my stuff embedded into 1 big multi-gb file. 

HTH

V

With a project open, you have to do a 'save as' to a completely different location, making sure you've got "copy audio with project" checked.

This will only copy across the audio being referenced by the project, meaning you can, if you want, delete the original project which might contain a lot of redundant audio clips.

You have to do this for every project, one at a time, and when you've finished, assuming you've deleted the originals, you still haven't archived anything - all you've done is tidied up your projects and probably reduced the hard drive usage by a fair amount.

This is a good time to take ANOTHER copy of everything from wherever you've done your "save as" to, maybe to an external drive.

Thanks, guys. That sounds like exactly what I wanted to do. Off to do it now o a bunch of projects.

I've done a couple of archives, and it's working. But it also seems to be a much faster alternative to the egregious "Clean Audio Folder" process. Is there any reason to use Clean Audio if I just do it this way?

None that I know of

I would not use the clean audio folder option..... it's not as controllable as I'd like it to be and that scares me a bit.

Yeah. The Clean Audio option is not only tedious, time-wasting and fraught with ambiguous directions, but just watching it run around scouring my hard disk(s?) makes me real uneasy. There have been many complaints about it here, one of which containing reassurances from a couple of reliable guys (forget who) a couple of years ago. I started using it after that, but hate doing it. Someone unfavorably contrasted it to the way Vegas works, and I keep hoping Cake will take the hint, but haven't seen any hint they may. It would be great just to decide where I want my audio for each project, then see it in a window in the project, and be able to delete or add files in that window. But if this "copy audio with project" deal does not reveal any hidden gotchas, it would seem to be a workable alternative.

I'm really not sure why you guys hate the Clean Audio Folder function so much. It just looks for anything that that you've deleted or cut from a track. It even gives you the option to listen to each bit of audio it has found before you dump it. That way you can go through and figure out the true garbage from something you may want to revisit. For example... flubbed guitar solos/vocal takes, false starts, clipped tracks, etc... scrap 'em. A solo or take that has potential or you didn't realize you had cut. Keep it. When it "scours" your drives it's just creating a list for you to view and make decisions on. Not so scary.

Beep: The time it takes is one problem for me. Another is that it looks like it's going through every folder on every disk I have, and I don't like having to sort through its results to make sure it's only showing me stuff that's in my folder for that project. I also don't like having to figure out what that "reiteration" checkbox is about. I meticulously use just one audio folder for each project, and don't want or need software to ask me about files in other folders. (My son says I'm a control freak. I agree, particularly with digital data.) I make backups all the time, and I don't want it looking in my backup folder or anywhere else for files to offer for deletion. All that being said, it has not, apparently made any mistakes. But that still leaves me waiting for it to search where I don't want it to search. Again, at the risk of being repetitious, I offer the quick, controlled and unambiguous Vegas model for contrast.