An archive database is a placeholder that is useful only once it has been loaded with a database dump. The load process does not actually copy pages, however, it materializes the database using page mapping.
Use the load database command to materialize an archive database.
load database ... norecovery was
introduced in Adaptive Server version 12.5.4 and 15.0.2 for archive
database access. You cannot use norecovery on
a traditional database.
You do not need to have Backup Server running when loading a database
dump into an archive database.