Those are some good things to consider and I had not thought of.
BUT, it also leads to a couple more questions for me (slightly different tangent here);
1) .tif vs .tiff, is there going to be a difference (for calculations) in which format I save it? (I suspect no is the answer since they are essentially the same thing, I just am not certain Arc reads them the same)
2) I have wondered about the benefit of a gdb. Am I OK/safe with saving rasters etc to a folder vs a gdb? I often do, and it does not seem to present an issue.
Also, thanks for being really helpful!