Chris, unfortunately with your environment, you cannot do an online
backup of informix on raw devices without backing all/part of it to
disk first.  You can avoid the copying to disk if you do offline backups
using the sample adsmpipe utility.

When the new onbar support is available, informix 7.2 or 7.3??
and the new ADSM x/open api is available (real soon), you'll be able to do
online backups directly to ADSM.  The x/open api will be available on
Solaris first, then later on HP and AIX.
Cyndie Behrens
IBM- ITSO SanJose
cbehrens AT vnet.ibm DOT com
408-927-3627