When transferring large amounts of data, its a good idea to tar/gzip it first. What if there is not enough space on the source system to contain both the original content and the tar/gzipped content?

One common solution would be to use tar gzip over the network:

#tar zcvf - /mydata | ssh This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it "cat > /data/mydata.tar.gz"

Where "mydata" is the source directory on the source system and "/data/mydata.tar.gz" is the destination directory on the destination system.