Whats faster for syncing remote to local filesystem, SSH or FTP?

Question

We have a cloud server with a large file directory which needs to be synchronized with a local system.

Which would be quicker and more reliable for such a task, SSH or FTP. FTP seems to drop the connection and even truncate files at its own will!

Answer 1

I have no information about speed, but ssh/sftp is likely to be more reliable than FTP, and certainly more secure.

However, in this case I would recommend rsync. It uses delta compression for fast transfers, and is designed expressly for synchronizing files.