At the time it was reported that copies were made before handing over. I assume that would be thumb drive type stuff.
Also, I don’t remember the source - not MSM though.
You’re right on that— not mainstream media. And, the thumb nail drive even rings a bell.
The drama article on the “taking” did mention computers, but as you suggest, it could have been “computer hard drives”, and then my boat sunk too, and I heard the “computer” part.
That makes more sense, the thumb-nail thing, because the drive being shuttled off to DC would not preclude NY state from keeping copies in NY FBI, I assume.
Better (more reliable) and just as easy to take an image of the whole drive onto another drive. Thumb drives force a selection process, picking parts of the target to keep and risking overlooking some data that might be hidden. Taking a complete image only takes an hour or so, and drives are cheap.