An archive node synchronizes the blockchain by downloading the full chain from the genesis block to the current head block, executing all the transactions contained within. As the node crunches through the transactions, all past historical state is stored on disk, and can be queried for each and every block.

Initial processing required to execute all transactions may require non-negligible time and disk capacity required to store all past state may be non-insignificant. High end machines with SSD storage, modern CPUs and 8GB+ RAM are recommended.

To run an archive node, download rinkeby.json and start Geth with:

geth --datadir=$HOME/.rinkeby init rinkeby.json

You can download Geth from https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/.