Setting Up Storage Devices for Archive (ON-Archive)
Use
You need to set up storage devices – for example, tape drives – with adequate capacity for Informix database archive with
ON-Archive .Initially, one tape drive supporting a single volume set and volume is sufficient. However, as your database grows you might want to archive to multiple tape drives, either in parallel or sequentially. Multiple tape drives have the following benefits:
This only applies to parallel archive. Two or more tape drives can be writing data at the same time, giving you a reduced elapsed time for the archive.
You can archive the database without constant operator supervision.
These benefits apply to both parallel and sequential archives. In either case, the total volume of archive data is spread across more tape volumes and drives, allowing a greater quantity of data to be archived without an operator changing tapes.
Procedure

SAP recommends that you have one or more tape drives dedicated to archiving.
For more information about setup of storage devices, see
Editing the File config.arc for ON-Archive.
See also:
Informix documentation at
http://www.informix.com