RAW files are sparse files. You'll need to use 'tar' in the process to handle the sparse file. To copy my Fedora 14 virtual machine out of the /virt directory on system 'remoteserver' to the /virt directory on my local server, I'd do this:
ssh remoteserver tar -czSf - /virt/fedora14 | ( cd /virt ; tar --strip-components=1 -xzf - )
Leave off the 'z' if on a LAN, since gzip compression will bring even a Core I7 to its knees and thus is only useful if you're trying to shove the data through a tiny DSL pipe.
If you try to read sparse files using just plain 'cat', as 'scp' does, the sparse sectors will read as all-zeros. Using the -S option when creating a tar file tells GNU Tar to treat all-zero sectors as sparse sectors, which will not get put into the archive and which will not get written when you untar the file (instead they will get seeked over to make it a sparse file).
