When being led by bloodthirsty psychotics looking for a flimsy excuse to massacre Americans?
, the computer files are treated like regular files. “Come on, take the files and get out! Without taking the time to delete the files on the computer to make sure we’ve got the only copy! Even though it would be quicker and more effective to just take the hard drive! Yeah!” • Without taking the time to delete the files on the computer to make sure we’ve got the only copy! Yeah, it’s not like Makarov would have a backup of his files anywhere…. • In the latter case it’s concievable that the files were encrypted but the computer left on with the decryption key entered, so pulling them off the drive would get decrypted files but yanking the entire drive would not (since the program decrypting them would presumably not save the key between sessions). Of course that’s conjecture, and they ought to have explained just why the hell they needed to copy the files. Another line of reasoning might be that the portable hard drive used is a military ruggedised version designed to withstand mishan
