Move data

Purpose

Transfer data between your local machine, HPC, and managed storage.

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What you need to decide first

• whether this is a one-time copy or repeated sync
• whether the data is small or large
• where the data should live after transfer

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Choose a transfer method

Use:

• scp for simple, one-time copies
• rsync for repeated transfers or large directories
• Globus, where available, for large managed transfers

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Copy a file with scp

From your local machine to HPC:

scp local-file.txt <username>@hpc.uct.ac.za:~/projects/my-project/

From HPC to your local machine:

scp <username>@hpc.uct.ac.za:~/projects/my-project/results.txt .

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Synchronise a directory with rsync

From your local machine to HPC:

rsync -avh data/ <username>@hpc.uct.ac.za:~/projects/my-project/data/

From HPC to your local machine:

rsync -avh <username>@hpc.uct.ac.za:~/projects/my-project/results/ results/

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Check transferred data

ls -lah ~/projects/my-project/
du -sh ~/projects/my-project/data/

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Notes

• Use /scratch for large active datasets during computation
• Use /home for code and small files
• Avoid repeated full copies when rsync is sufficient

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Next

• Manage files and storage
• Store and share research data