Greetings, Based on a question someone else asked I realized I may need to clarify my problem statement. I am not attempting to clone the primary to use as the standby but rather to clone the primary to a completely separate box to use as a test database. HTH. Thanks. Bill Wagman Univ. of California at Davis IET Campus Data Center wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx (530) 754-6208 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l