Just an update on this - after running the compressed backups on this database and another one for 3 weeks now, they are consistently running much faster than before the compression - a little less than half the time they used to take, and the size of the backups is consistently reduced by about 87%. Pretty nice, thanks for the tip Robert! Now to test the restores before I implement on my production database . . . -----Original Message----- From: Allen, Brandon In case anyone is interested - I did a test of the 10g "as compresssed" backupset on a 285GB databases and here are the results: W/O Compression: backup size = 280GB, backup time = 2 to 10 hours with an average of about 7.5 hours over the past 3 months (this goes to a disk staging area and later to tape on a Netbackup server with a LOT of other backup activity so there is a wide variance in backup times depending on what else is running at the same time) W/ Compression: backup size = 36GB, backup time = 2.9 hours (only tested once so far) Environment: AIX 5.3, Oracle 10.2.0.2, Netbackup 5.1 MP4, BaanIV ERP application data Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message or attachments hereto. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of this company shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l