Patent ID: 6862632

Claim:
A method of dynamically creating a communication path between first and second storage devices, comprising: creating a connection to a source volume on the first storage device and indicating that the source volume is not ready to transmit data on the communication path; determining which of said source volume and a destination volume contains an initial set of data; after successfully creating the connection to the source volume, creating a connection to the destination volume on the second storage device and initially indicating that portions of one of: the destination volume and the source volume do not contain valid copies of data in accordance with which of said destination and said source volumes contains said initial set of data; after successfully creating the connections to the source and destination volumes, indicating that the source volume is ready to transmit data on the communication path; and transferring the initial set of data from one of the source volume and the destination volume to the other one the source volume and the destination volume while transferring data written after the initial data from the source volume to the destination volume.