Best way to manage recorded WAV files?

[kratos]

Ive noticed that after recording a couple of vocals in WAV in my DAW, it took up a massive 5 GB of space in just two of my projects!
ANd the most annoying thing is that when I slice bits of the recorded audio it creates further tincy bits of WAV files down the line needing MORE SPACE!
I was wondering how you manage recorded audio especially when its recorded at 44100 Hz WAV etc...
I have 500Gb of space but at this rate I can only do less than 100 projects if they have recorded audio in them.

 

[ez_willis]

i have a 36 gb drive that's half full. in reaper, there's a function called Clean Current Project Directory that displays a list of unused tracks for that song. select the ones you are certain are trash and hit delete. they go straight to the recycle bin.

 

[Jim Lad]

I store all of my work on an external hard drive but keep the temporary files on the main hard drive.
Do this and delete temporary files often.
Also do a disc cleanup and defragment at least once a week.

 

[mjbphotos]

Are you sure you are looking at the files correctly? An audio CD has 700MB of files on it. That's 2 tracks (stereo) x 79 minutes.

 

[oretez]

A 44.1/16 Wav will require (approximately) 5megs/min. Higher sampling frequencies and larger bit rates will require proportionately larger files.

If what you recorded does not seem to conform to rate appropriate size you might want to check settings in recording software. Some applications default to dual mono (stereo) rather then mono. "Effectively doubling all file sizes with no benefit for mono (vocals from a single mic, and in fact little benefit from any localized source) Some default to recording in 32 bit float (with attendant doubling over 16bit integer of file size). Some software will automatically, by default, create backups of audio files while giving you little idea of where the reside. Software that does not support direct to disc recording (bypassing OS kernel) typically employ 'temp' files that are not automatically destroyed when application is closed typically because such temp files were a main reason to not trust such software, for tracking, in the first place).

in worst case scenario (with software with poor UI) you could be creating files requiring 60 meg/min, or about 8 times amount of space needed for reasonable recordings, 12 times what is needed for redbook CDs.