Tanle, Thanks for the info. That is the method I thought ASM used when you said that ASM could handle the archlogs. I don't have ASM installed on my play box yet. If I remember correctly ASM is a separate install and is started seperately from the Oracle instance then they talk to each other. Thanks again, Ron >>> tanel.poder.003@xxxxxxx 07/01/2004 3:05:54 PM >>> ASM is using raw devices. It's not possible to (simply) extract datafiles nor archivelogs from an ASM managed device, but Oracle knows the internal format of the it and knows where the blocks of its "files" are stored on the device. You can use RMAN to back up archivelogs and datafiles from an ASM device, no OS copying is allowed. I personally do like ASM and haven't seen any showstopper-bugs, but I've not implemented a large RAC+ASM in production yet, only few two node ones on linux servers (I don't trust OCFS, I have seen too much trouble with it). Tanel. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------