I am running an RMAN backup to a storage unit with multiple drives on 
6.5.1.  The RMAN backup is allocating only one channel as it's a small 
database and there is no need to use multiple drives.  However I'm 
noticing that for each new RMAN backup piece, NBU mounts a different 
tape in another drive instead of using the one that is already loaded 
which was used for the previous piece.  So it ends up alternating back 
and forth between several tapes and using many drives in the process.  
This doesn't seem very efficient.  Is there any way to prevent this?  I 
don't remember seeing this with 3.4 from which I am in the process of 
upgrading.

Example: RMAN backup with one channel, and 3 backup pieces

Stream/piece 1: tape 1 - drive 3
Stream/piece 2: tape 2 - drive 2
Stream/piece 3: tape 1 - drive 1

This behavior also seems to be the same that some of us have seen 
recently with catalog backups, in which it will create several 
streams/jobs and put them on different tapes for one catalog backup 
(thread "Catalog backup = 4 separate jobs???").

Thanks for any help on this.

Bryan
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