Acer Hard Drive Installation

1. Set the jumpers on the drive. If it is your boot drive set it to master.
2. get into bios setup and do an autodetect of the drive. Set it to LBA mode.
3. Boot from a floppy with fdisk on it. win95/98 startup disk has this. Run fdisk to make sure the drive is seen. Then create partitions however you want. Make sure the partition that you will be booting from (drive c:) is set active. Exit fdisk and reboot the system. Format the drives, run sys c: from the boot disk to install OS boot files on the drive. The drive should now boot. Post again if this does not work.

Things gets a bit complicated with Acer...  Since you've a Pentium 120, you'll surely need to update the motherboards bios in order to identify your new HDD, follow the info. found here for Bios update:

http://www.acer.com/aac/support/articles/webbios.htm

Then take a look at this article for correct procedures to install a HDD for Acer computers:

http://www.acer.com/aac/support/articles/hddinfo.htm

> Then create partitions however you want.

If you are using the original "retail" release of Windows 95,
or if you are using MS DOS, you will have to partition your hard-drive:

- Partition 1, "primary", 2GB
- Partition 2, "extended", 4.4GB
- inside the "extended" partition, create two "logical" drives,
each of size 2GB.

If you are using an OEM release of Windows 95,
which added support for 'FAT32',
and if you use the 'FDISK' from that software,
you can create one "primary" partition of maximal size.

Are you adding this hard-drive into your computer,
to become your "primary" drive,
and relegating your current drive to a "secondary" role?

Are you adding this hard-drive into your computer
to become a "secondary" drive,
thus keeping your current drive as 'C:' ?

Is it your intent that it will be the "only" hard-drive in your computer?

Will you be copying all your files from an existing hard-drive,
or are you starting "fresh" ?

Please note:  This will be my only hard drive and I will be starting fresh, not copying my old files to this HD.

I am also trying to install win 98 as the OS, thanks for all the help

You should still upgrade your bios first in order for your motherboard to identify the correct size HDD.  Than use Win98's boot disk to boot the machine and run FDISK, when prompt if you want to enable large disk support, choose YES to enable FAT32.  Upon creating a primary partition, and logical partition if you want, reboot and format.  Since Win98 already comes with CDRom support, you can easliy run setup from there.

first things first see if the bios will take your hard drive correctly by doing a hdd detect search if it finds it you need to use lba if it cant use the correct amount you have 2 choices
update the bios or use a partitioning program like ez drive provided with you hdd running easy drive will configure the hard drive for you (partition + format) making sure u have the hard drive set to the single setting after this just boot up and run set up it might ask you to hold down the control button to boot from a disk do this and use you win98 cd-rom boot disk and then run set up

The links that larbel gave are no longer valid.  Please provide again is possible.

Seadhs,

I've just check the link myself and it's there...  Try copy and paste to make sure no typo.  Should you find my comment acceptable, please reject the current answer and let me repost mine.

Still cant find the link, will update.  I have tried to repartition the disk using a logical and extended. I did it just as "OTTA" recommended with no change.  

The ACER link does not show a update for this model.  

Is the bios reporting the HDD size correctly then?  If your motherboard doesn't identiy your HDD size correctly, you will get all sorts of errors even you managed to get window installs.  I think you might have to write to Acer and tell them your problem to see if they have updated bios for you...

> I did it just as "OTTA" recommended with no change.

Did every step work, as you expected?
If not, then which step created a problem for you?

Any progress to report?