{"id":13228,"date":"2025-08-19T07:42:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T07:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/?p=13228"},"modified":"2025-08-19T07:42:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T07:42:15","slug":"copy-files-from-google-compute-engine-to-local-directory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/cloud\/copy-files-from-google-compute-engine-to-local-directory","title":{"rendered":"How to Copy Files from Google Compute Engine to Local Directory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To transfer files from a Google Compute Engine (GCE) instance to your local computer, use the gcloud compute scp command. This allows you to securely copy files over SSH.<\/p>\n<h2>Prerequisites<\/h2>\n<p>Before using the command, make sure:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Google Cloud SDK is installed and configured on your local machine.<\/li>\n<p> <code>Install guide<\/code><\/p>\n<li>SSH access is enabled for your VM. The SDK usually handles SSH keys automatically.<\/li>\n<li>Firewall rules allow SSH (port 22) on your GCE instance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Copying a Single File<\/h2>\n<p>Use this command to copy a file from your VM to your local machine:<br \/>\n<code>gcloud compute scp INSTANCE_NAME:~\/remote-file.txt ~\/local-directory\/<\/code><\/p>\n<h2>Replace:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>INSTANCE_NAME \u2192 your GCE VM instance name<\/li>\n<li>remote-file.txt \u2192 the name or path of the file on the VM<\/li>\n<li>~\/local-directory\/ \u2192 the destination folder on your local machine<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Copying an Entire Directory<\/h2>\n<p>To copy a whole folder (and its contents), add the &#8211;recurse flag:<br \/>\n<code>gcloud compute scp --recurse INSTANCE_NAME:~\/remote-directory\/ ~\/local-directory\/<\/code><\/p>\n<p>This copies everything inside remote-directory to your local machine.<\/p>\n<h2>Example Command<\/h2>\n<p>Here\u2019s a real working example that copies .bashrc from a VM named vm1 to your local Documents folder:<\/p>\n<p><code>gcloud compute scp vm1:~\/.bashrc ~\/Documents\/<\/code><\/p>\n<p>If the previous commands don&#8217;t work due to zone or other issues, try adding the &#8211;zone flag:<br \/>\ngcloud compute scp vm1:~\/.bashrc ~\/Documents\/ &#8211;zone=us-central1-a<\/p>\n<h2>Tips<\/h2>\n<p>-> To avoid typing the zone every time, set a default:<br \/>\n<code>gcloud config set compute\/zone us-central1-a<\/code><\/p>\n<div class=\"qanda-read-box\"><div class=\"bg-light read-more-icon\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/24061434\/read-txt.png\" alt=\"Also Read\"><p><\/p><h3>Also Read:<\/h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/blog\/top-fifty-aws-stats-and-facts\" target=\"_blank\">Top 50 AWS Stats<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To transfer files from a Google Compute Engine (GCE) instance to your local computer, use the gcloud compute scp command. This allows you to securely copy files over SSH. Prerequisites Before using the command, make sure: Google Cloud SDK is installed and configured on your local machine. Install guide SSH access is enabled for your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13230,"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13228\/revisions\/13230"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bacancytechnology.com\/qanda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}