scp question (scp and exit shell)

["Mike Egglestone" <megglestone@sd57.bc.ca>]

Hi all,

I would like to copy a huge file from one server to another.
but because it takes a long time, I would like to exit
my remote shell that I used to login and run the scp command.

I have tried with the " & " symbol after the command but no go.
ex.
scp /home/user/file.txt bigserver:/home/user2/ &

Is there any way to do this without generating a new passwordless ssh key
and using the " -i " option with scp?  I could do it this way, but it
takes me too long
to create all the keys and edit the authorized_keys file all the time.

Thanks for your help!!

Mike