SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY : Buying and Telling: First you buy, then you sell.

Costa Mesa-based Archive Corp.’s top executives kicked off a nine-city tour last week to tell securities analysts how the company plans to benefit from its recent merger with rival Cipher Data Corp. in San Diego.

The company, which manufactures tape drives used to make backup copies of computer data stored in hard disks to prevent accidental loss, announced two weeks ago it was reorganizing into six decentralized divisions, eliminating certain research efforts and laying off about 3% of its work force.

Archive’s stock price hit what B.J. Rone, chief financial officer, called an “acquisition canyon,” but it has rebounded from a low of $7.25 during the acquisition fight in January.

Last Wednesday, New York-based Bear Stearns & Co. issued a buy recommendation for Archive stock. The report cited Archive’s position as the largest supplier of backup products, the growth of the industry as computer users’ data storage requirements increase and opportunities to improve the financial performance of Cipher.

The Bear Stearns report said Archive is positioned to be a major player in the emerging market for digital tape storage of computer data. Based on the same technology as the popular compact audio disks that are such a hit in the recording industry, Archives expects that digital computer back-up systems will become a big revenue source in the 1990s, said D. Howard Lewis, Archive’s chairman.