Described is a distributed copying technique that may be used in migrating large amounts of data from one or more source devices to one or more destination devices. The data source is divided into partitions. As Fibre Channel adapters (FAs) become available, each of the FAs may copy a partition of the data. A copy indicator value indicates the last partition delegated to an FA for copying. The last FA to complete copying is responsible for ensuring completed copying of any other data partitions delegated to an FA which has died during migration of the other data partitions. In the event that the last FA dies prior to completing its processing, additional steps are performed by other remaining FAs to copy all data partitions not known to be successfully migrated.