We’ve seen a few clear cases now where somebody has made an enquiry for data recovery with us using an AI1 tool. I’m not calling this out to be mean, I just really don’t understand the point. To give the benefit of the doubt, it appears that the tool was probably used to flesh out the enquiry for some reason. Maybe to make it seem more professional? Unfortunately, it made up details that are wrong, and added zero benefit to the enquiry.
It’s true that most people needing data recovery don’t necessarily have a huge amount of diagnostic tools available, so our ideal enquiry is something like this:
Hi,
I was using my hard disk yesterday as normal, and when I plugged it in today, the disk is not showing up on my computer.
Can you help?
That’s it. We’ll figure out the rest. We don’t expect any technical info, just the real events that lead up to the problem. Was it dropped, was the data deleted, did it get wet, etc.
On the other hand, here’s the actual enquiry we got that has a few hallmarks of something written (or re-written) by AI:
Hello,
I have an external hard drive (brand: LaCie Rugged Mini) that is not visible in Windows’ File Explorer or Disk Management, although Windows Device Manager detects the drive model and the drive spins up normally.
Here are the key details I’ve gathered:
- Drive model: ST500LM000‑SSHD (approx. 465 GB)
- Windows Volumes tool reports full capacity (~476,940 MB)
- Disk Management does not show the drive as a separate disk (only the internal system disk is shown)
- I have already removed it from its enclosure and connected via SATA‑USB adapter — status unchanged
- It appears the partition table / filesystem is corrupted or missing rather than the drive being completely dead.
I would like a full quotation for:
- Diagnostic / evaluation of the drive (what you charge for this)
- Estimate of the cost for full data recovery (restoring partition and/or retrieving files)
- Turnaround time for each phase
- Whether you offer a “no data, no fee” guarantee
If you need any further information (e.g., serial number, past usage, screenshots of Windows tools) please let me know.
Many thanks for your time and I look forward to receiving your quote.
Best regards,
We do occasionally get enquiries that contain a lot of detail, and that’s fine. I’m not complaining about detail. The problem here is that the details listed above are untrue. The only thing that’s definitely true is that the drive is a LaCie Rugged Mini.
What’s Wrong?
- Wrong drive model (We received a 4TB mechanical disk, not a 500GB SSHD)
- What is the Windows Volumes Tool? (Does this mean the Disks & volumes screen in Windows Settings?)
- The partition table / filesystem status cannot be known at this stage, as the disk is stuck in a Busy status
List of pointless questions that are already answered on the website where our contact info is found:
- Cost for diagnosis
- Cost for recovery
- Turnaround times
- No-fix no-fee
Other Quirks
This message contains bold, italics, bullets, a numbered list, a Tilde! ~ (I use these a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the wild before.) It’s very unusual for an email to contain so much formatting.
A Surprising Outcome
I was quite surprised when the disk actually arrived for recovery. I assumed it was just another bot filling in our web form on a break from counting electric sheep. 🐑🐏🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑
Fortunately, the contents of the enquiry in this case didn’t contain enough wrong information to change the approach we took with the recovery. Data recovery was successful after some firmware level repairs. But what if the AI had invented water damage, or decided that the disks had been dismantled without cleanroom facilities? At the very least it could have wasted our time and effort, and at worst, could have cost the user more money.
What’s the point?
If you can think of a genuinely good reason for this whole thing, I’d love to hear it. I just find it impossible to understand the thought process that went into making a fictionalised enquiry instead of just telling us what really happened. If people use this sort of tool in other parts of their life, what do they gain? With their car mechanic, what sort of unnecessary work could be carried out? Or worse, a message to their doctor?
In the News
I stopped for lunch in the middle of writing this, and saw on the news that West Midlands Police have got in trouble for citing unrest at an imaginary football match as a reason to ban another football match.
Guildford’s retirement came after he admitted inaccuracies in evidence to a Commons committee, including a denial the force had used AI to research evidence, including a non-existent match between the Israeli club and West Ham.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4glp75xr6zo
Footnotes
- Yes, LLM, ML, whatever. It’s all just AI now. ↩︎
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