Oh! Well maybe I'm misunderstanding the function of an alias. So, even though I can see the project files inside the alias folder on the internal drive, there are not really there? In other words, they are not taking up space on the internal drive. If the answer is yes, than I was wrong. I was worried the contents of the alias folder were taking up drive space.
I just googled alias and found this: "An alias is a pointer to a file or folder on your hard drive. The alias is a small file that takes very little space because it only has information about the location of the original file. It is not an exact copy of the original file. "