1. Is this because RMAN level 0 backup only backs up the blocks that have been written, and escapes empty blocks in data files? >>> Yes. 2. How does RMAN determine which datafiles to group together, to create different backupsets? >>> I'm not positive on this, but IIRC it tries to size them evenly, e.g. if you have 2 backup sets and have one 100GB datafile and 4 25GB datafiles, it will put the 100GB datafile in one backupset and the other 4 files in the other backupset. Regards, Brandon -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l