We have a group of DBAs running a restore and I was wondering if there was something in the way they kicked off their restore that caused the following:

“They initiate restore, tape is loaded, image is restored, tape is returned to slot in the library…then restore moves to the next image…goes back…loads the same tape, restores the images, tape is returned to slot in the library.”

Is there something on the Oracle side that needs to be specified that says, “load tape, restore ALL the relevant images on the tape (without unloading and reloading it again in a drive), then go to the next tape when the restore is completely done with the images on the first tape.”

This loading and unloading is adding 3-4 minutes to the restore of each image.

Are there any oracle experts out there who understand why this is happening (so we’ll know for the future and it will not be such a time-consuming process)?