A method and system for performing a copy operation between storage devices coupled to a Fiber Channel switch element is provided. The Fiber Channel switch element receives a user command to copy data from a source storage device to a destination storage device and controls the copying operation. The Fiber Channel switch acts as a SCSI initiator and initiates a write operation for the destination storage device and initiates a read operation for the source storage device; and uses an alias cache for intercepting messages between the destination and source storage devices. A RX_ID mapping cache is used to substitute a RX_ID so that that a Fiber Channel write target appears to the source storage device as the destination storage device, and to the destination storage device a Fiber Channel read target appears to be the source storage device.