Home > Storage > PowerMax and VMAX > Data Protection > Dell EMC PowerMax and VMAX All Flash: TimeFinder SnapVX Local Replication > Linking target volumes to snapshots
A target volume can be linked to a snapshot when a user wants to present a point-in-time copy to a host. Multiple targets can be linked to a single snapshot. Writing to a linked target does not affect the point-in-time of the snapshot; should the data on the linked target be corrupted by the user activity the target can be relinked to the original snapshot. The following figure depicts a source volume with three snapshots, and a target linked to the third snapshot.
Targets can be linked in either copy mode which duplicates data to create separate, full-volume copies, or nocopy mode which creates space-saving copies that only allocate space during to host writes to the target.
Host writes to a source volume that has a snapshot with a target linked in nocopy mode only preserve point-in-time tracks as snapshot deltas, and do not cause any tracks to be copied to the linked target. The linked targets access the preserved point-in-time by sharing the snapshot delta allocation.
Snapshots that have linked targets cannot be terminated. The user needs to unlink the target first and then terminate the snapshot.
Linked targets can be SRDF R1 volumes with the following requirements: