Embodiments of the present invention provide methods, program products, and systems for reusing a duplex storage medium resource. Embodiments of the present invention can be used to transition between duplex media by determining that a prior transition from a first duplex storage media to a second duplex storage media is being performed and reinitializing the second duplex storage media to receive, for storage, duplex data transferred from the first duplex storage media. Embodiments of the present invention can be used to reduce potential collisions with naming conventions and reduce unwanted delay that results in forcing an offload by managing the recovery medium and keeping it available through policy based medium changes.