Some import/export notes

• Always use direct=y when using exp/imp (much faster since it basically copies blocks from the db to the dumpfile)
• Disable archive log mode before an import of a large database and do a backup afterwards. It's not really state of the art to delete archive logs when you get an ORA-19809: limit exceeded for recovery files (altough you could just back them up <.<)
  
• When moving data from a <=9i to 10g+ database, only do a schema import. Those old standard users could cause the import to just abort.

Just a few things I remember from some frustrating few hours of exp/importing a 40 gig database -.-

Btw: Just in case you don't know how to disable archive log mode:

shutdown immediate;
startup mount;
alter database noarchivelog;
alter database open;
archive log list;