We were historically a shop that used raw, almost everywhere, going back to at least 7.0 days. We have begun moving towards ASM, as we move to 10g/11g, but we still have much raw, mostly on 9iR2 databases, and even a couple of 8.1.7 stragglers..... -Mark -- Mark J. Bobak Senior Database Administrator, System & Product Technologies ProQuest 789 E. Eisenhower, Parkway, P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 +1.734.997.4059 or +1.800.521.0600 x 4059 mark.bobak@xxxxxxxxxxxx www.proquest.com www.csa.com ProQuest...Start here. -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Greg Rahn Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 5:14 AM To: ORACLE-L Freelists Subject: Re: 12G Desupport for Raw Devices Generally before something is deprecated, an alternative is introduced. My guess is that 11gR2 will provide something. Do many people use raw devices for data files? e.g. data file is actually a raw volume Most of the customers that I have worked with have moved from raw to ASM. -- Regards, Greg Rahn http://structureddata.org -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l