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Data Transfer

Your Shared Home Directory

Your HPC home directory, $HOME, is on shared storage and is available on both login nodes and the compute nodes. Upload your input files to $HOME through a login node; your compute jobs can then access them without another transfer. Files on a login node's local disk, such as /tmp, are not automatically shared.

Compute nodes do not have internet access. Transfer datasets, code, and other required files into $HOME through the login nodes before running your jobs. Jobs can write results to $HOME for you to download later.

Prepare Your Terminal

For the terminal transfer examples, use Bash (Linux/macOS Terminal or WSL on Windows). Run this once on your own computer to obtain your HPC $HOME path:

HPC_HOME=$(ssh -p 22 username@login.hpc.ntua.gr 'printf "%s" "$HOME"')

The quoted command reads the remote $HOME. Use HPC_HOME in the same local terminal for the transfers below.

Upload Files from Your Computer

Run these commands on your computer, with the source in your current directory.

Upload one file:

scp -P 22 input.dat "username@login.hpc.ntua.gr:${HPC_HOME}/"

Upload a directory and everything inside it:

scp -P 22 -r my-project "username@login.hpc.ntua.gr:${HPC_HOME}/"

The directory will be available at $HOME/my-project on the login and compute nodes. Use that path in your job scripts.

Download Results to Your Computer

Run these commands on your own computer. The final . means “save in my current local directory.”

Download one file:

scp -P 22 "username@login.hpc.ntua.gr:${HPC_HOME}/results.txt" .

Download a directory and everything inside it:

scp -P 22 -r "username@login.hpc.ntua.gr:${HPC_HOME}/results" .

scp uses -P for the port; ssh uses -p. Transfers can overwrite existing destination files.

Using WinSCP or FileZilla

For graphical SFTP transfers, use WinSCP or FileZilla Client.

Create a connection with:

Setting Value
Protocol SFTP — SSH File Transfer Protocol
Host login.hpc.ntua.gr
Port 22
Username Your HPC username
Authentication Your registered SSH key (select its matching private key in the client)

Open your remote home directory, then drag files to upload or download.