Checking SMART status, fan speed, and temperature on a Microsoft Windows system

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A user sent me a text message today stating she heard a strange noise from one of the systems in her office today. The photo she sent with the text message showed me the system she referenced was the domain controller in her office. I thought the noise likely came from a fan or disk drive, so I remotely connected to the server and checked the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T or SMART) status of the drives attached to the system — many drives have a self-monitoring capability built into them that can provide diagnostic information on the drive, including information that may reveal to you that the drive may fail soon).

I checked the status of drives attached to the system by opening a command prompt window and issuing a Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC) command, but the results indicated all of the drives were OK.

C:\>wmic diskdrive get status, size, model
Model                            Size           Status
DELL PERC S150 SCSI Disk Device  999642954240   OK
WD Elements SE 2622 USB Device   1000169372160  OK
PNY USB 2.0 FD USB Device        62018611200    OK


C:>

You can also use the Get-Disk command from a PowerShell window to obtain the SMART status for drives.

PS C:\Users\Administrator> get-disk

Number Friendly Name Serial Number                    HealthStatus         OperationalStatus      Total Size Partition
                                                                                                             Style
------ ------------- -------------                    ------------         -----------------      ---------- ----------
0      DELL PERC ... 40006d008086                     Healthy              Online                  930.99 GB GPT
1      PNY USB 2.... 0C7118C52080                     Healthy              Online                   57.77 GB MBR
2      WD Element... WXA2AA03ZL4C                     Healthy              Online                  931.48 GB GPT


PS C:\Users\Administrator>

The disk drives seemed to be ok/healthy, so I installed SpeedFan to check the CPU temperature and fan status, which you can see when the program opens. The Readings did not show any indication of a problem with either of the two fans displayed nor did it show a temperature problem.

When I clicked on the S.M.A.R.T. tab, I only saw the external USB-attached Western Digital drive listed (it was also the only drive displayed on the Readings tab).

When I selected it, it showed a status of "no error".

I ran a short test, but it also showed a status of "no error". And when I checked the drive's temperature by clicking on the Charts tab, it appeared steady and good.

So I probably will need to go to the site tomorrow to see if I can determine what is making the noise; if the noise is infrequent, the source may not be readily apparent.