...
The preservation of group information will associate matching names by default, but may fall back to using the ID number in some circumstances (see also the --numeric-ids option for a full discussion).
--archive
Same as -rlptgoD (no -H)
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost everything (with -H being a notable omission). The only exception to the above equivalence is when --files-from is specified, in which case -r is not implied.
--links
Copy symbolic links as symbolic links.
...