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[chilibud]

I have an HP Pavilion Elite Model m9150f. Hard drives C & E are identified as IDE\ST3360320AS with 335.35 GB. Hard drive D is identified as USB2.0-CRW MFG by Realtek Semiconductor but the Hardware Diagnostic Tool does not show a drive letter or a size and when tested it fails the seek test, funnel test, and surface scan (errors HD535-5W,HD535-3W,HD535-2W). Windows identifies this drive as drive D (FACTORY IMAGE). Are these real errors or is this not an actual hard drive? I have performed defrag & scan disk & checked with Norton and found no problems. HP wants me to back up all my data to another drive and recover the computer to original factory settings. Is this really needed? My intuition says this is more trouble than it is worth. Also, I have generated recovery disks containing the factory image so I don't need that on the D drive any more. What should I do?

[fwilson]

Chilibud,

The Realtek USB2.0-CRW is your card reader. This is your d: drive. Card readers are designed to emulate a hard drive and some of them do so without media installed. Mileage may vary running hard drive tests on solid state media. There are no heads to move around and any results would be "emulated".

I believe the D: drive being identified (FACTORY IMAGE) is misleading.  I don't see how a factory image can be installed on a card reader. 

If your C & E Drives test Ok I would call it good and get on with life, your intuition is correct. If you really want to be sure plug some media into your card reader, I bet the d: drive tests will pass then.

-Fred