Permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM) have been used in a lot of industrial fields. In this paper, a review of faults and diagnosis methods of PMSM is presented. Firstly, the electrical, mechanical and magnetic faults of the permanent magnet synchronous motor are introduced. Next, common fault diagnosis methods, such as model-based fault diagnosis, different signal processing methods, and data-driven diagnostic algorithms are enumerated. The research summarized in this paper mainly includes fault performance, harmonic characteristics, different time-frequency analysis techniques, intelligent diagnosis algorithms proposed recently and so on.