The present invention provides computer systems, methods, and software products enabling the creation and maintenance of disaster recovery volumes having a reduced impact with regard to network traffic over a communications network. A disaster recovery volume is generally created at a local archival storage unit including therein at least one storage medium constituting the disaster recovery volume. The medium constituting the disaster recovery volume is associated with the primary volume thereby allowing the storage medium constituting the disaster recovery volume to be relocated to a remote archival storage unit at a remote location without compromising the association between the primary volume and the disaster recovery volume. Incremental changes to the primary volume may then be communicated and incorporated in to the disaster recovery relocated to the remote location.