Does there has way scp not change "link" setup?
I've always preferred 'rsync -essh -aHv source host:path' over scp for remote copies. It will generally get everything right and in the case where part of the content is already there it is much more efficient.
I know I'm going to be embarrassed by the answer to this one but I've checked a couple rsync and ssh references, including man rsync, and do not find an option -H. What is it?
-H, --hard-links preserve hard links