A technique translates a hybrid virtual volume (vvol) having a file system that contains intermingled virtual and physical volume block numbers (vbns) into a "pure" stream of virtual vbns (vvbns). The stream of vvbns is illustratively embodied as an output file system data stream of a vvol image that is transferred by a source storage system ("source") to a destination storage system ("destination") in accordance with image transfer operations, such as volume copying and synchronous or asynchronous mirroring, provided by a volume replication facility. The blocks that are sent as part of the image transfer are selected from a container file of the hybrid vvol on the source. In particular, the invention is directed to a technique for translating physical vbns (pvbns) of a source aggregate on the source to pure vvbns of the output file system data stream that can be used on a destination aggregate of the destination, where embedded pvbns in the source hybrid vvol image are not valid.