Transfer of large database from 1 server to another

Before you bring ZIP into the mix, be advised that Sql Server natively supports backing up a database to multiple files typically resulting in smaller files and faster backup time.

Check out Backup to multiple files for faster and smaller SQL Server files by Greg Robidoux.

Summarizing Greg's post:

Problem

Have you ever wished you could get your backups to run faster? Well there may be a way, by writing to multiple files. Creating SQL Server backups is pretty simple to do; you can use the SQL Server management tools or you can use T-SQL commands to issue the backup. But sometimes with large databases it takes a long time to run and it is difficult to copy this very large file across the network or even to your backup tapes.

Solution

Write your database backup to multiple files. In addition to writing your database backup to one file you have the ability to write to multiple files at the same time and therefore split up the workload. The advantage to doing this is that the backup process can run using multiple threads and therefore finish faster as well as having much smaller files that can be moved across the network or copied to a CD or DVD. Another advantage to writing to multiple files is if you have multiple disk arrays you can write your backup files to different arrays and therefore get better I/O throughput. One thing to note is that to maintain the I/O throughput you should keep the writing of your backup files and the reading of the database file on different disk arrays.

Backup to multiple files using T-SQL

BACKUP DATABASE [Northwind] TO 
DISK = 'C:\Northwind_file1.bak', 
DISK = 'D:\Northwind_file2.bak', 
DISK = 'E:\Northwind_file3.bak', 
DISK = 'F:\Northwind_file4.bak' 
WITH INIT , NOUNLOAD , NAME = 'Northwind backup', NOSKIP , STATS = 10, NOFORMAT,COMPRESSION

On another note:

You should SERIOUSLY consider taking this backup with COPY_ONLY to make sure you don't mess up your production differential base.

You should stripe your backup along with compression. Copy-dbaDatabase does it for you. It stripes into 3 backup files which is sufficient in most cases.

Also, you will need to restore the database with MOVE

Would this damage or alter the data alignment in any way?

No. Taking a full backup wont alter or damage data (provide your data is not corrupted or damaged).