When you are creating large archives, you may want to use multiple tapes to store one archive. By splitting the contents of one archive onto separate tapes, you can keep similar types of material together in the same archive.
You can open material on any tape in a multiple tape archive but you will always need the last tape in the multiple tape archive sequence. The last tape contains necessary header information for locating the material you want to restore.
To open material from a multiple tape device or VTR archive:
Smoke reads the header information to ensure that the tape is actually the last tape in the sequence. If the incorrect tape is placed in the tape device or VTR, a corresponding error message appears.