When it's time to clean up some drive space and move those old projects off the current hard drive, Cubase makes it easy to archive your work so that it may be edited again later if necessary. Usually most of the audio files that are referenced within a project have been copied to the Audio folder that is automatically created when you initially make your project folder. However this is not always the case, so before burning that project to a CD or DVD for archiving there are a couple things you should do. With your project open, go to Project>Pool where you can view and manage all of the files that are or were at one point used within the project.

In the status column the "x" icon indicates that a file is outside the project and only being referenced. If you were to just archive the project as is, those files would be missing when you went back to it if the originals had been moved or erased. Another icon resembling a tiny waveform partially in red indicates that processes or edits have been done to the file. To make sure everything is contained within the project for archiving, right-click in the pool and choose Prepare Archive.

At this point you will be asked if you want to freeze the edits on the audio files in the project. If you cooose to freeze them, you will not have to include the Edit folder when you archive the project.

Whichever option you choose, all of the necessary files will be imported and "Pool is ready for archive!" will be displayed. Now you can go ahead and burn the files to disk for archiving. Remember that any files that are within the project folder but not in the Audio folder will not be included by this process, so if for some reason you have audio files somewhere else in your project folder you must be sure to include them in the archive. You can safely not include the Images folder and the ".csh" file that may be in your project folder in the archive, as these will be readily generated when the project is opened again. You may also choose to dispose of the edits in the Edits folder if you chose to "freeze the edits" during this process.