Unix/Linux : secure copying between servers with SCP command examples

Have to write this down in case I forget again and hope you may find these SCP examples useful too.

Example 1:

To copy a single file :

scp sourceFile user@targetServer:targetDirectory/targetFile

Example 2:

To copy entire directory(plus sub directories) over to remote server :

scp -r sourceFolder user@targetServer:targetDirectory/targetFolder

Example 3:

To copy single file from remote server to local server:

scp user@remoteServer:remoteDirectory/remoteFile localFile

Example 4:

To copy entire directory from remote server to local server:

scp -r user@remoteServer:remoteDirectory/remoteFolder localFolder

NOTE : By default SCP works on port 22, in case the remote server has different port for SCP. You can specify the port number by the -p option :

scp -p 3300 -r user@remoteServer:remoteDirectory/remoteFolder localFolder

References :