Abstract: Method and apparatus for creating reliably duplicatable tape volumes by padding the volume label on the source volume with compression resistant random data, and copying such a source volume to a tape volume that does not have padding. In a preferred embodiment, the application program creating the source volume uses the present invention to create the padding on the source volume. The amount of padding to be inserted can be specified either as a fixed amount, or as a dynamically variable parameter changed on the basis of statistically significant results sampling. When a padded source volume is then duplicated to another tape, without padding, the likelihood that the source data will "fit" on the unpadded destination volume becomes much more predictable.