ANSWER:

This is dependent on a lot of things, so there is no single best solution, IMHO, but I usually use just rsync on the directory anyway.

Things to consider:

• If the transfer is slow and the directory changes during transfer, rsync can update the target really easy.
• Copying multiple files is a bit slower than one big archive
• Transfer via SSH has a bit of overhead, but nc is unencrypted.

by SvenW from http://serverfault.com/questions/383519