recursive copy with spaces in descendants

[Chris]

On a hunch, I gave the following a shot:

tar -cvlf - '/usr/local/etc/transmission/home/Downloads'/ | split -a 2
-b 3900m - /mnt/usb/TX_DL.tar.

which created a split tar archive of the files on /mnt/usb. I'm still
thinking there's something with the source path/file names that the
msdosfs driver on BSD doesn't like, but at least this way is usable
for the intended scenario.

I guess I'll call this solved unless you all have some insight as to
why the original method wasn't working.

Thanks for all the help so far!