Cloning Versus Duplication of Volumes

When you clone a volume, the volume is not simply duplicated. Each save set on the volume is reproduced completely, which could mean that more or less space is used on the clone volume than on the source volume.

You might prefer to make exact copies (duplicates) of Backup volumes to provide additional disaster recovery protection. This approach, which in UNIX relies on the tcopy command, is not recommended but might serve a specific environment adequately. If you rely on an exact copy command, you must first ensure that the destination volume can hold the number of bytes that are contained in the source Backup volume. In addition, be aware that Backup would have no knowledge of the duplicated volume since the volume is not entered into the server's media database. If you enabled automated media management and you leave the volume in an autochanger managed by Backup, the volume may be considered eligible for relabeling and use during a scheduled backup, because it does not have a valid Backup label.

Similarly, it is possible to make an exact copy of an archive volume. However, the annotation that is associated with each archive save set is information that is stored in the Backup server's media database, not on the volume itself. Therefore, a duplicate volume of the archived save set does not include the annotation. If the entry of the original archive save set is removed from the media database, the annotation that describes it is also removed.