A suggestion with no idea if it will work with disk drives. Try fiddling with the number of channels in conjunction with the maxpiecesize parameter. allocate channel ch1 type disk maxpiecesize=5000M format 'yada yada'; allocate channel ch2 type disk maxpiecesize=5000M format 'yada2 yada2'; allocate channel ch3 type disk maxpiecesize=5000M format 'yada yada'; allocate channel ch4 type disk maxpiecesize=5000M format 'yada2 yada2'; etc. etc. -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l