We do what you describe on most all our databases - hot backups for Production DBs and cold for Dev and Test DBs. Works just fine. We have a .../backup/stage and seven day-of-the-week directories such as .../backup/Sun, .../backup/Mon. For the smaller Prod DBs, we keep 7 days of backups on disk, rotating through. On bigger Prod DBs we keep at least 3 days of backups, not 7, to save space. We keep at least 3 to ensure that the tape backup has a couple of nights to get each set, since the RMan backups and tape backups may be going on simultaneously. On our Dev and Test DBs we just do a weekly cold backup and only have .../backup/rman and .../backup/rman_prior. Each cold backup cleans out .../rman_prior, moves .../rman to .../rman_prior, then does the backup. That gives the tape backup a week to get the files. To save space we back up a tablespace at a time and then gzip those files before backing up the next tablespace. We have a SQL script that dynamically generates the *.rcv file that drives the backup. The core of it looks like this (the &1 parameter is the full path to the .../backup/stage directory): Select 'Backup Incremental Level 0 Tablespace ''' || Tablespace_Name || ''' ;' || Chr(10) || 'Host ''gzip -1 &1/*_s*_p?'' ;' From DBA_Tablespaces / Hope this gives you an idea of how it could work in your environment. Jack C. Applewhite - Database Administrator Austin I.S.D. - MIS Department 512.414.9715 (wk) / 512.935.5929 (pager) On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Fred Tilly <ftilly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: All, Has anyone set up an environment where they run RMAN (hot) backups to disk and then move the backups to tape using a standard filesystem backup, then remove the older backups from disk. Does anyone see any problems with doing this ? Thanks Fred