A method, system, and computer program product are provided to synchronize data maintained in separate storage areas using a copy-on-read technique. The separate storage areas may be distributed across a network, and the replicas of the data may be used for backup and/or disaster recovery purposes. Storage objects containing data and information relevant to managing the data by a particular application are identified, and only those storage objects are read. Data contained in the storage objects read are then copied to the replica storage area. This process avoids reading non-useful data, making the synchronization more efficient and conserving bandwidth of connections over which the data are sent.