Patent ID: 8055865

Claim:
A computer readable storage medium including code to communicate with a primary storage and secondary storage and perform operations, the operations comprising: generating information indicating data sets to copy from a primary storage to a secondary storage; initiating a background copy operation to copy the data sets indicated in the information to the secondary storage according to an ordering indicated in the information; receiving, after initiating the operations to copy the data sets indicated in the information, a write request to write data to a target data set indicated in the information to copy from the primary storage to the secondary storage; copying the target data set from the primary storage to the secondary storage; determining whether the write request is part of a sequential write access to sequential addresses in the primary storage; copying sequential data sets following the target data set from the primary storage to the secondary storage in response to determining that the write request is part of the sequential write access, wherein the target data set and sequential data sets copied to the secondary storage are capable of being copied out of order with respect to the data sets being copied by the background copy operation according to the ordering indicated in the information; indicating in the information the sequential data sets copied to the secondary storage as copied to the secondary storage; and executing the write request to write the data to the primary storage in response to receiving an acknowledgment that the target data set was copied to the secondary storage.