"Rsyncing the directory itself" means making a copy of the directory node (the root of the tree) and naming it with the original name in the new location. That

"Rsyncing the directory itself" means making a copy of the directory node (the root of the tree) and naming it with the original name in the new location. That is different than taking the children of the source directory and copying them into the new location. Scp and cp have the same semantics, so cp is vulberable to this gotcha as well. Rsync doesn't have to be used with remote sources or targets (nor does scp).