Hi,
an inode is an index in an unix filesystem,
the number of inodes = number of files and directories

see -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inode
sorry, using a single zip file is not possible directly,
because only complete files can be loaded via HTTP, not parts of it,
but it should be possible to write a server application (in PHP for example)
that reads only a part of a file and sends it to the client as single file,
(e.g. extracts a single image from the ZIP and sends it back)
best regards,
Klaus