Say you are backing up your database to another piece of hardware (that does its own compression). Would there be any IO reflected on the database server (where the datafiles reside) when executing any of the following RMAN maintenance or validation commands? delete noprompt expired backup; delete noprompt expired archivelog all; delete noprompt expired copy; delete noprompt obsolete; list backup; list archivelog all; restore database validate check logical; restore validate controlfile; restore validate spfile; Sometimes I believe DBOptimizer is picking up system io possibly related to these commands. Joel Patterson Database Administrator 904 727-2546 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l