File Transfer

The PuTTY suite includes two programs for copying your files securely between machines. PSCP is a noninteractive program much like scp, and PSFTP is an interactive program inspired by ftp.

18.3.1 File Transfer with PSCP

PuTTY’s pscp client is for copying files securely between machines, just like scp from OpenSSH and Tectia. Also like scp, pscp is noninteractive. (For an interactive client, see psftp. [18.3.2])

The syntax for PSCP is almost identical to that of scp. [7.5] Remote files are referenced by:

[user@]host:path

where user is the remote username, host is the remote hostname, and path is the folder path to the file in question.

18.3.2 File Transfer with PSFTP

PSCP can copy files securely between computers, but the user interface is noninteractive. If you prefer a familiar FTP-like interface, try PSFTP, PuTTY’s interactive file-transfer program. To start a file copying session with remote computer server.example.com, run:

    C:\> psftp server.example.com
    login as: smith
    Using username "smith".
    smith@server.example.com's password:
    Remote working directory is /home/smith
    psftp>

The prompt psftp> indicates that PSFTP is ready to accept commands. If you’re familiar with FTP, the PSFTP commands will make you feel right at home. To transfer a file from your local machine to the remote server, use:

    psftp> put myfile

or to copy a local file, myfile, as remote file remotefile:

    psftp> put myfile remotefile

This is equivalent to the PSCP command:

 C:\> scp myfile server.example.com:remotefile ...

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