Using the Duplicate Optical (DUPOPT) command

The Duplicate Optical (DUPOPT) command can be used to create a duplicate optical volume.

The created duplicate volume is identical to the original volume except for the volume identifier and the time created.

Performance improves significantly when you use DUPOPT instead of CPYOPT to back up an entire volume from scratch. The DUPOPT command has the following requirements:

Two optical drives are required. One of the drives can be a virtual drive.
The source and target volumes must have the same sector size.
The source and target volumes cannot be on opposite sides of the same cartridge.
The source and target device types must be the same type (for example, optical library to optical library or optical stand-alone device to optical stand-alone device).
If the source media type is *WORM, the target media type can be either *WORM or *ERASE.
If the source media type is *ERASE, the target media type must be *ERASE.
If the source media type is *DVD-RAM, the target media type must be *DVD-RAM.
If the target media type is *WORM, it must be uninitialized.
If the target media type is *ERASE, all data currently on the target volume will be lost.
Once the DUPOPT command begins operation, the system will not interrupt the process. The system will not schedule any other work in the drives until the command completes.
If the source volume for the DUPOPT command is in an image catalog, the target media can be recordable. Recordable media types are CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW.

Use the DUPOPT command when you want to copy the entire volume or for incremental backups of your source volume. For an entire backup, wait until your source volume is full before you use the DUPOPT command.

DUPOPT always makes a complete copy of your source volume. However, you can use it to make incremental backups of your optical volumes in the following manner:

Determine how often you want to back up your source and how many backup copies you want to keep.
Use DUPOPT to duplicate your source media to a target media that has a media type of *ERASE. This will give you an exact copy of the source media.
Continue making duplicates of your source volume as often as you want until your source volume becomes full.
Once the source media is full and you have a successful final copy, you can reuse all previous target media for backups of other source media.
If your source media type is *WORM, before your final backup determine whether your final target media type needs to be media type *WORM or *ERASE.

This command is an example of duplicating a virtual optical volume to a recordable optical volume. The optical volume VIRTVOL is duplicated on volume DVDRW. The volume in device OPT02 will be unloaded after the duplication process is completed and will have a volume identifier of VIRTVOL

DUPOPT   FROMVOL(VIRTVOL)  TOVOL(DVDRW)  NEWVOL(*FROMVOL)
 CLEAR(*YES)  TODEV(OPT02) TOENDOPT(*UNLOAD)

Attention: If the DUPOPT command does not complete successfully or it ends for any reason while processing, the backup is unsuccessful. In addition, if the target media type is *WORM, the target volume may no longer be usable.