Patent attributes
A thin device (TDev) is tagged to identify the TDev as being used to access snapshot data on the storage system. If a snapshot is to be shipped to a cloud repository, the tagged TDev is linked to the snapshot, and mounted to a cloud tethering subsystem. When the tagged TDev is linked to the cloud tethering subsystem, the snapshot subsystem reads the thin device tag and, if the thin device is tagged, selectively does not execute a define process on the tagged thin device. By not executing the define process, the tracks of the thin device do not contain metadata identifying the location of the snapshot data on the storage system. Writes to source do not require a private copy of the old data for the snapshot, even if the snapshot is created in a different storage resource pool than the source data volume.