These have been good to me. Nice way to preserve permissions as well. tar czf - files/ | ssh whatever.com "cd /path/to/; tar xzvf - " ssh whatever.com "cd /p

These have been good to me. Nice way to preserve permissions as well. tar czf - files/ | ssh whatever.com "cd /path/to/; tar xzvf - " ssh whatever.com "cd /path/to/; tar czf - files/" | tar xzvf -