Recording from ZU1 to hard drive

I generally always record to tape so I'm in unfamiliar territory looking for help. I have a client that wants video sent to them directly on a hard drive. Fine, I've got a Sony HVRA-CR1 recorder that I can hook to my camera.

I asked the client this question: do you want me to simply send you the card out of the camera. No, they say drag the files from the recorder to a hard drive and send that to us.

To me this seems redundant, but I've never recorded this way before so I'm not sure what questions to ask or exactly how to record this stuff so that they're getting the kind of files that they need. (i.e. .mov, h-264 whatever). Don't know what editing system they'll be using.

So this situation is a bit like the blind leading the blind. I just don't believe that this is as simple as me recording then dragging the files to a hard drive. Seems like there's a nasty little trap in here somewhere and in the end I'm gonna have an unhappy client.

Can anyone out there explain this process and what I should be looking for?