PTLE Filing - Organization tips

I'm about to start mixing my first project with my 002, LE, and G4 Powerbook. My question is - What's the most efficient way to file my songs? Do I mix in the original PTfile, or open a new file for my mix and import files from original tracking? And when I'm done mixing, how do a archive my album with out all the unused takes? I know these may seem like stupid questions. I know the different options but I'd like to hear what works best for you all out there. Peace.

Personally I would use the same session file to track and mix, I'm not really sure why you would want to do it any other way. As for general organisation I would consider backups to be the most important thing, and the "Save Session Copy In" command. I would usually have my regular session, a backup on my other HD, and a hard backup on cd or dvd. I always have to learn the hard way. As for archiving, just use the "compact selected" command under the Audio files menu in the Edit window. Everyone likes to skin their cats their own way though.

If you do mix in a separate session than the one you tracked everything in, make sure you create the mixing session using Save Session Copy As function so the session has it's own folder, complete with audio and fade files folder. If you simply create another session for mixdown and save it within the same folder as the tracking session, both sessions will reference the same fades and audio files. This can be a problem as one session will rewrite/reallocate all of the fades in the folder, so if you open up the other session, it will ask you to find all of the fades that used to be in the designated folder...you can simply tell PT to ignore finding all the fades and it will then proceed to recalculate every fade file, which, depending on how many fades were in the session, can take quite a while. For archiving, use compact selected to shrink the session size. Personally, I try and archive everything from the session, even if it wasn't used and have found that DVD-R's are usually large enough to handle the job.