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How can I transfer files from one server http://abc.com to another server http://xyz.com

I do have the ftp passwords of http://abc.com [source server] and destination server.

Which tool can be used?


Instead of downloading files from source server to computer and again uploading from computer to destination server isn't there any shortcut way?

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Do you have SSH access to the first server? –  Ewan Heming May 13 '11 at 4:41
Yeah i do have SSH access... –  KoolKabin May 13 '11 at 4:57

5 Answers 5

up vote 7 down vote accepted

You need to find an FTP program that supports the FXP protocol and your two servers need to support it too: http://www.smartftp.com/support/kb/what-is-fxp-f14.html

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+1 CuteFTP Pro supports FXP –  John Conde May 13 '11 at 14:07
I guess FXP is the correct one i am searching. Exploring it a bit more.. @John: can't find cuteFTP support for FXP.. searching n searching –  KoolKabin May 15 '11 at 6:14
Yes after testing for certain times i got it working... finally thand paulmoriss. I will award the bouty at the end days.. thnx –  KoolKabin May 15 '11 at 8:36

You could use an app like WebDrive, which mounts remote FTP drives as if they were local drives (called a 'virtual drive'), then simply drag and drop the files from one virtual drive to the other on your own machine.

How it works

  1. Download WebDrive here. (Mac or Windows, free 20-day trial)
  2. Put in the FTP details for your 'http://abc.com' server to create the first virtual drive.
  3. Put in the FTP details for your 'http://xyz.com' server to create the second virtual drive.
  4. Browse to the files you want to copy on the first virtual drive, and drag them to the second virtual drive.

WebDrive will copy them from the first FTP location to your machine (you don't see this step; it happens in the background), then copy them to the second FTP location for you. This is the closest you'll get to copying directly between FTP servers, without using the FXP protocol, which isn't widely supported yet.

WebDrive alternatives
In addition to WebDrive, you might also like to consider Transmit (Mac only) or Expandrive (Mac and Windows), which both offer the same remote disk mounting feature. (I use Transmit's Disk feature every day to save optimised images directly to the FTP server straight from Photoshop/Fireworks. It's great, but Expandrive and WebDrive both do this too.)

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The idea of remote FTP Drive is really great. Its fine. I tried expandrive and connected my site 1. Then again connected to site 2 also. Copied file from site 1 in my explorer and pasted it over site 2. I found it like downloading file to my temp and again uploading it to site 2. Its simply like other stuffs with less hassle of connecting. So trying next soln. –  KoolKabin May 15 '11 at 6:10

If you have SSH access to the source server then you can login to it and use the ftp command to start an ftp session with the destination server. You would need to use the command line to type in the ftp commands but it's not too hard and you can find tutorials online about it. For example: http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_ftp.htm

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I am missing steps... Can i get some detail listing how to accomplish task. I find only command list. I missed the step of loggin in. Where do i login? in Source Server or destination Server in SSH –  KoolKabin May 13 '11 at 5:58
Ah, OK, I think my explanation was a bit too high level. What operating system do you use? –  Ewan Heming May 13 '11 at 6:36
I am using Windows Vista –  KoolKabin May 15 '11 at 6:12

If you have SSH access the best way would be to use *NIX tar command (compress), and then using scp to transfer it over new hosting and then again using tar to uncompress, and keep a copy on your local drive for backup purposes.

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the idea of downloading it in local computer for backup purpose is just good. i like it. But what if we want to skip that step? So i am trying other solutions too –  KoolKabin May 15 '11 at 6:08

EDIT: I just saw that you're using Windows. You'll need something like Cygwin to emulate the Unix toolkit on Windows. Alternatively, you could use something like WinSCP.

As alexus pointed out, SCP is a great option. Another option is Unix/Linux's rsync (available on almost all Unix-based machines). It's a utility that's frequently used for back-ups.

For transferring between two servers, abc.com and xyz.com:

rsync -avzPe ssh user@xyz.com:/source/ /destination/on/abc

A more practical example:

rsync -avzPe ssh admin@xyz.com:~/public_html/ ~/public_html/

A few notes: The above example assumes you're logged into server abc.com. If you desire to go the other way, switch the arguments. The user (admin in this case) also needs to have appropriate SSH access. Finally, the flags that I used aren't necessarily the only ones that will work, they're just ones that I tend to use. You can technically do without -v and -P, you'll just see less useful console output.

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