Backing up physical files

Is it necessary to back up the physical files associated with an ONLINE db "outside of the environment"? Consider "raw partitions" as well. I always thought that backup of physical files was a necessity to prevent against disk failure - that you would restore your old files and apply the contents of saved transaction log files against them to bring them up to date (at least that is how you're supposed to do it with Oracle). Does the "Archive" utility in tbmonitor eliminate the need to make copies of the physical files?? JJ ------------- ^^^^^^^^^ Jack Jolly @ jjolly@jjolly.b24a.ingr.com (| 0 - |) | * | Intergraph Corporation, Huntsville AL \\_______/ AEC Project Management Support