Archiving files in the Finder (from the File menu, choose Create Archive) with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is a great way to "bundle up" seldomly-used files. However, doing this will cause archived files to lose any set Extended Attributes (EAs) or Access Control Lists (ACLs) metadata. This issue applies to Mac OS X 10.4 and Mac OS X Server 10.4.
Not all metadata is lost when archiving—only EAs and ACLs. Other metadata, such as EXIF information in a photo file, won't be lost.
EA and ACL metadata usually comes from a Mac OS X Server administrator. So, if you don't use files that are stored on a Mac OS X Server, you probably won't notice the difference. If you want to avoid losing EAs and ACLs, don't archive files using the Create Archive feature, or use a third-party file-archiving utility that can preserve this kind of file data.