Teradata ARC writes no information to tape about empty objects. If there are many empty users on a system, using these keywords can appreciably reduce the archive time.
The NONEMPTY keyword is only meaningful when used in conjunction with the ALL option. Using NONEMPTY, without ALL for at least one object, produces an ARC0225 warning message. In this case, the NONEMPTY option is ignored and execution continues.
Teradata ARC uses the ARC_NonEmpty_Listmacro to determine which databases to archive. The ARC_NonEmpty_Listmacro is a DBS macro located in database DBC and is created by the DIP scripts. If this macro was not installed or if you do not have the EXECUTE privilege, Teradata ARC still archives all objects. Thus, if this macro is not installed, the time savings is not realized.