How to Safely Delete Unused Regions Within ProTools

The are few things more rewarding than creating music. The ability to be able to accurately manifest your musical vision has never been easier with the technology provided by ProTools.

You may discover that as you delve deeper into the production of a song that the session files begin to pile up, to the point at which, hard drive space becomes a vital commodity.

Here I will guide you through the process of safely deleted these unused files in order to have a more efficient recording experience.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A computer system running ProTools

1. From the edit screen select Consolidate Region (shift+alt+3)
   
   So as to create new regions and avoid the risk of losing small edits all over the place, highlight everything and consolidate so that all regions have the same start/end points. This helps keep everything clean and accessible.
   
   Make sure to rename the files with overtly descriptive names as not to confuse yourself.

2. From the Regions List (right side of edit screen)
   
   1) shift+command+U (to select)
   2) shift+command+B (to remove/delete)
   
   A menu will appear requesting that you perform one of two things:
   
   Remove: Removes regions from the session but still resides inside the audio file folder associated with that session. If you have "Saved As..." the regions will still be in your other copy.
   
   Delete: Well... deletes the region. If you open a previous "Saved As..." copy those regions will not exist and you can either trash that one and save your newer, fresher one or save it as a template.

3. After performing this operation open the drive where the song files are located and open the audio files section. I like to toggle between the PT Regions List and my hard drive to ensure that the file names correspond. Sometimes many of these files will not be deleted from the drive, only the region list and still reside inside your session. I'm not sure why this happens. It seems to be pretty random. This could have something to do with how PT handles files.

Tips & Warnings

• This procedure isn't as complicated as it seems. I just want to stress that one should be acutely aware of the operation, because once these files are deleted they cannot be recovered. Be precise. More than likely, once you have reduced the amount of unnecessary files your system will operate more efficiently.