A computer uses a variety of sensors to determine the temperature of a hard drive. These sensors include an infrared sensor, a digital temperature sensor, and a resistive temperature sensor. The resistive temperature sensor is used to measure the temperature of the hard drive in real time.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
The Question
SuperUser reader Royi Namir needs to settle a dispute with a colleague:
How indeed? Let’s dig in and get to the bottom of this friendly dispute.
“How do software programs (i.e. hwmonitor) determine the temperature of the hard drive?”
I said that there must be a thermometer inside the HDD and the data (via SMART) is passed as regular info to the soft which wants that info .
He said : “No. There is no thermometer inside the HDD. You have to plug it as another hardware on your HDD. All the software uses statistics about heat from the RPM info”
So, how do software programs like hwmonitor, determine the temperature of the HDD?
The Answer
SuperUser contributor Renan backs up Royi’s assessment:
If you’re curious about the SMART system and everything it is capable of reporting, we highly suggest checking out the link above. You’ll find there are variable for everything from temperature to spin time to errors and everything in between.
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