[colinthompson]

My guess is that in terms of a time vs. money trade off, buying a new drive and shelving the old one is the preferred method of archiving. The maintenance required to convert all files to some compact format might be enough of a PITA (however minor), that it's simply more worth it to buy a new drive.

[baroffoos]

Would be good if the tools had an archive option that automatically saves all the files as flac and can decompress to wav again with a single button press.

[Kye]

Reaper's Save As dialog will let you collect all samples and convert them with the project file. I wish all DAWs had that.