It's exactly similar; in other words, it's the same thing.  "archive" is the Tops-20 term for offline files that are voluntarily put on tape.

The directory entries still exist, but don't point to any data.  The FIle Descriptor Block (FDB) contains two entries for the names of two tapes with copies of the data.  You can set things up so that if you try to open the file, you get put to sleep until the operator mounts the tape and then DUMPER goes and finds your file.  Seamless, but slow unless you happened to already have the tape loaded (and it was labeled ANSI or Tops-20).

Files could be set for forced archiving, known as "migration".  The installation would set expiration dates for files so that if they hadn't been used in certain period of time, they were "migrated" to tape.

DEC Marlboro was an extremely cool place to be before the Jupiter was cancelled.  Very interesting stuff happening, some of which made its to VMS.

At least in the United States, if you were full time, you had a blue badge and if you weren't (like a contractor) you got purple.  You didn't get your face on the purple badge.

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On 3/12/23 4:11 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

I was actually asking Bob, but I didn't know you were also at DEC. Cool.

What you describe sounds very similar to what offline files in TOPS-20 ended up like.