A computer-implemented method for improving the efficiency of recording data to tape may include (i) identifying a command to duplicate a data unit to tape storage after a previous version of the data unit has already been duplicated to tape storage, (ii) identifying metadata that distinguishes between segments of the data unit that have not changed since the previous version of the data unit and segments that have changed, (iii) reading the previous version of the data unit from tape storage and reading the segments of the data unit that have changed from a data sharing storage rather than tape storage, and (iv) combining, using the metadata, the segments read from tape storage that have not changed and the segments read from the data sharing storage that have changed to duplicate the data unit to tape storage. Various other methods, systems, and computer-readable media are also disclosed.