A second method to transfer files from a Windows command line prompt is to use PSCP. Unlike PSFTP, PSCP is not interactive and is designed to transfer files "in one shot" and then exit, much like OpenSSH's scp command. PSCP also allows you to specify wildcards within filenames (PSFTP does not). Additionally, PSCP will work with any SSH server as it is not dependent on SSHv2 being present.

Note  PSCP will blindly copy files to the remote server, overwriting any files with the same name, without prompting for verification. Be careful when using PSCP to copy files.

If you wish to prevent PSCP from overwriting any files, remove any write permissions on any file you wish to keep. This can be done on a UNIX system by issuing the following command:

$ chmod --w file

This will prevent PSCP from overwriting the file.

PSCP is run from the command line and has many options, which you can see via the –h option:

C:\>pscp -h
PuTTY Secure Copy client
Release 0.53b
Usage:      pscp [options] [user@]host:source target
            pscp [options] source [source...] [user@]host:target
            pscp [options] -ls user@host:filespec
Options:
  -p        preserve file attributes
  -q        quiet, don't show statistics
  -r        copy directories recursively
  -v        show verbose messages
  -load sessname  Load settings from saved session
  -P port   connect to specified port
  -l user   connect with specified username
  -pw passw login with specified password
  -1 -2     force use of particular SSH protocol version
  -C        enable compression
  -i key    private key file for authentication
  -batch    disable all interactive prompts
  -unsafe   allow server-side wildcards (DANGEROUS)

Some of the more common options are explained in more detail below:

-p = This will preserve the date and timestamps on any file transferred.

-r = By default, PSCP will only copy files and skip over any directories encountered. The –r option will recursively copy any directory structures encountered.

The following are two examples of utilizing PSCP to exchange files with machine server.example.com as user sshuser.

Click on the Start Menu and select Run. In the field provided, type in cmd if you are running Windows NT/2000/XP or command if you are running Windows 9x/ME and click on the OK button.

The syntax for downloading a file from a remote machine is as follows:

pscpuser@hostname:remote-filename local-filename

where user is the user ID to which you will connect on the remote machine, hostname is the hostname or IP address of the remote machine, remote-filename is the full path and name of the file on the remote machine to download and local-filename is the full path and name of the downloaded file.

It is not necessary to specify the directory for the remote-filename or target-filename arguments. If the directory is not specified in the remote-filename argument, PSCP assumes the file is in the remote home directory of the user ID that is specified. If the directory is not specified in the local-filename argument, PSCP will download the file into the current directory. However, both arguments are required, so if you do not wish to change the name of the downloaded file and you want to put it into the current local directory, specify "." for the local-filename argument. "." represents the current directory:

Here is an example of a user using PSCP to connect to machine server.example.com as user sshuser and downloading the file named test.pl to the current directory:

      C:\>pscp sshuser@server.example.com:test.pl .
      sshuser@server.example.com's password: ********
      test.pl      |     0 kB |    0.1 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%

      C:\>

The syntax for uploading a file is as follows:

pscplocal-filename user@hostname:remote-filename

where user is the user to connect to on the remote machine, hostname is the hostname or IP address of the remote machine, local-filename is the full path and name of the local file to upload and remote-filename is the full path and name of the remote uploaded file. If no directory is specified for the local-filename argument, the current local directory will be used. If no directory is specified for the remote-filename argument, the remote home directory of the user logging in will be used. However, the colon following the hostname must still be present.

Here is an example of a user using PSCP to connect to machine server.example.com as user sshuser and uploading all files named test.* to /tmp:

      C:\>pscp test.* sshuser@server.example.com:/tmp
      sshuser@server.example.com's password:
      test.c       |      0 kB |    0.1 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%
      test.sh      |      0 kB |    0.2 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%

      C:\>