Differences between optimize table and copy to the new table

Differences between optimize table and copy to the new table

I have an INNODB table which is quite big because of frequent updates. Now
i want to run the optimize table for this table to get back the disk
space. However, i can also create a new table and copy the entire old
table to the new one.
So, is there any difference in term of performance between the 2 methods?
If i copy the old table to the old one, will the entire old table be
locked during this operation?
Thank you very much.