> Why would oracle ask for a file that is from 5am when the backup finished at > 1 30am. Is it the "UNTIL CANCEL" that made the difference? Because system01.dbf required redo to bring in consistent with all other datafiles. One way to avoid this is: switch logfiles immediately after backuping up datafiles, and then backup those archived redo. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l