On Thu, 3 Dec 2015, Michael Hennebry wrote:
Though quiet at the moment, my desktop sometimes sometimes makes a noise that I attribute to either a disk or a fan on its last legs. I'm looking for suggestions for distinguishing.
For the disk, I expect I should use either hdparm of fsck. Even after reading the man page, I'm not sure how I would use hdparm. If I use fsck, what should I take as evidence of a bad drive? A good drive?
Is there a way to tell whether the OS thinks a fan is on? Is there a way to turn a fan on or off manually?
For a disk, smartctl is the way forward, and look at the attributes. T'interweb will advise on which three parameters are worth paying heed to.
smartctl -a /dev/sda
sensors (part of lmsensors) will report on some fans, maybe.
jh