We have "on-demand" loads from a teradata warehouse, so we got a long down time window at end of month for backups but they want shorter times for backups during the rest of the month, so RMAN or any other block-type level backup tool will work for us. joe original message below Joe, Interesting. We are wrestling with our warehouse backups. Currently doing a cold backup after the weekly loads. I'm not sure if this would help us or not. We don't have monthly loads like you do. Tom Mercadante Oracle Certified Professional ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------