Is this generosity, or passive aggressive?

[NotaDisneyMum]

My ex-H and I separated and divorced two years ago - it was messy, acrimonious and left permanent damage. Despite this, we have managed to maintain civil contact for the sake of DD-10.

A few weeks ago, when my SO was dropping DD off at her Dads, he (ex-H) handed SO a paper bag, saying it was for me, and that he would email me about it.
Inside was a computer hard drive - not an external one that you might use for backing up computers, but one that had obviously been removed from a desktop computer. I had no idea what it was for; I'm not very high tech, but ex-H is a computer geek so I recognised what it was.

Three days passed, and still no idea what it was for, and I had got to the point where I was thinking about dumping it, when an email from ex-H arrives, telling me that he had been sorting out his computer as he had upgraded to an iMac and these were all the photos he had found from "our life together" which he thought I might want copies of. He went on to ask that once I had finished with the hard drive, to please not throw it away, if I didn't want it, to return it to him.

So here I have a hard drive, apparently with photos on, and no idea how to get them off. I don't have a desktop computer, so can't install it that way, even if I knew how! There were no directions or instructions with the drive either. I did some internet research, and discovered that I needed a special cable-kit, that I could buy for about £10. I had some credit with Amazon, so ordered one.

One evening last week, SO and I shared a bottle of wine while we tried to work out how to connect and install this drive to my laptop. Once done, I discovered thousands of pictures, lots taken by my ex-H before we even met, and loads more of lads weekends he went on while we were married, photos of his family etc etc. There were also copies of our wedding photos and videos (which he must have digitised after we separated). There were also some pics of DD when she was younger - but I had those on my laptop already.

So, was this a generous gesture on his part, but clumsily delivered - or was it (as a family counsellor we are working with said), a deliberate passive-aggressive action on on his part; appearing to offer me photos but actually requiring me to go out of my way to work out how to use the drive, buy the cable and then find out that there was nothing of value on there anyway?

Either way, it's a bit weird!

[FetchTheMaid]

If he's a computer geek he probably wouldn't think anything of copying pics from a harddrive - and he would have had to spend a bit of his time moving the pics onto it.

I know that when I got a new laptop it took me ages moving pics from old pc onto portable harddrive and then onto new one.

To me it comes across as if he's backed up all the photos to the harddrive and given you a choice whether you want copies or not.

[Happydogsaddog]

Wouldn't he just stick them on a dongle (portable usb thingy) so you could just stick it in the usb slot? Sounds quite odd to me.

[YummmyMummy]

I sounds an odd thing to do passive aggressively and I agree it's probably just a geeky way to give you some pics. Just in case though, give it back to him, tell him how much you appreciated it and how there were pics of DD that you managed to get that you didn't have before. That way if he's trying to be generous you're thanking him for it, passive aggresive - bites him in the arse!