I remember struggling with this exact thing when setting up automated backups.
One important tip: always make sure the remote path is absolute or that your shell can resolve it correctly.
I usually write it like this:
bash
Copy
Edit
scp -r "user@192.168.1.100:/home/user/foo" ~/Desktop/
Quoting the remote path avoids issues with spaces or weird characters, and using ~ locally saves time. Also, if your folder is huge or the connection isn't great, consider combining it with -C to enable compression:
bash
Copy
Edit
scp -rC user@remote:/path/to/foo ~/Desktop/
That’s shaved a few minutes off big transfers for me. Try it out!