The reliability of actuators and sensors is an important topic in many electric motor drives. A comparison of structured residual synthesis methods for actuator and sensor fault detection and isolation (FDI) in a permanent magnet (PM) DC motor, applying two different approaches to the design of primary residuals, is presented in the paper. The first method involves a standard approach and is based on system transfer matrix synthesis. The second, more convenient approach involves the synthesis of primary residuals based on the analysis of subsystems that describe the observed system. Both methods are applicable for linear and stationary systems but were successfully applied to a laboratory system that shows nonlinear and non-stationary properties and is affected by a constant disturbance, thanks to the proposed technique of residual translation with the previous design of internal residuals. A real-time experiment performed on a laboratory setup, which consists of a DC motor, an amplifier designed in the form of a linear electronic circuit, and a Compact RIO 9075 real-time processor, is used to illustrate the drawbacks and advantages of the analyzed approaches.