The consistent split freezes the IOs, so that its impossible for a write to go to a disk that hasn't split yet. However, to the database, this still looks like a shutdown abort, or a server crash. EMC still recommends doing the begin backup before you do this. ...hmmm, even if you switch logs through all the online redo logs immediately prior to the split? why ? -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l