How to use WinSCP for secured SFTP

Posted on January 22, 2009 at 5:12 am

Common unsecured FTP is doable using a FileZilla client. But that if the host is secured? Are we supposed to use putty and SSH together with FTP terminal commands? Oh no we won’t! Because we want to take the easier way of course. With WinSCP, a freeware developed by Martin Prikryl that you can download from http://winscp.sourceforge.net, you can securely connect to your servers using SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).

To connect to your SFTP server login to it using the WinSCP GUI. Double click WinSCP icon from your installed programs. It should open a login screen like the one below:

On this screen, enter the hostname, user name and password. Click the login button to start exploring the secured server. Below is a screenshot of one of my secured hosts:

The window is split into two sections. The left side is your local “My Documents” folder in Windows while the other side to the right is your server’s home folder.

Moving files from each side is a simple drag and drop operation. You should be authorized to write to the folder in the right (SFTP server) side to be able to transfer files. To check your credentials, check the “Rights” column on the SFTP panel:

You can change the rights of the file or folder by right clicking it then clicking “Properties”. You can then edit the read, write and execute attributes for each group of permissions. There is an octal entry for users familiar with chmod.

Notice that there are shortcuts provided at the lower part on the GUI. Creating a new directory at the SFTP directory is just a click away from these shortcuts:

Navigating the SFTP directories is just like working with a Windows Explorer GUI. Click on the folder to enter that folder and click the “..” folder to move out of the folder. There is also a traversal shortcut provided at the upper part of the GUI where you can use it to view your present working directory. You can also use this dropdown interface to jump to other parts of the directory: