Backup files on Mac OS X with metadata

I found that the metadata of a file (e.g. Spotlight comment) on Mac OS X is not preserved by the traditional backup utilities such as tar or zip.

Here is one way to do it. First create a DMG file using the Disk Utility. Then copy those files that need to be archived into the drive to which the DMG file is mounted. Next we can compress the DMG file using any compression programs like zip. In this way, the metadata is preserved while the disk space use is reduced by compression.