Trying to replace hard drive on my acer travelmate 5610-4836

If the BIOS cannot detect the hard disk then it is most likely faulty.
To get your Acer operating again, replace the hard drive, install Windows on the new hard drive plus the Acer's device drivers and your programs.
You candownload the drivers from the Acer WEB site. Make sure you select the model of your laptop and the XP or Vista version of the drivers you that require and it matches the Windows version that is installed on your laptop. Use this link to get to the Acer support: -

http://www.acersupport.com/drivers_download.aspx

Any ATA/IDE 2.5 inch hard drive will do for your laptop. Unfortunately the ATA models have been replaced with SATA hard drives, so it will be difficult to get a new hard drive. Also, expect to pay more per-gigabyte for the old ATA models in comparison to the standard SATA drives.

Below is the link to the service manual for your notebook. It is in PDF format so you will need a pdf reader like the free download adobe.

Go to chapter 3, page 63. That will explain the removal of the hard drive carrier and the drive itself.

http://tim.id.au/laptops/acer/travelmate%20230%20280.pdf

Your hard drive has a hidden partition that contains the original factory OS and program stored for rescue and recovery.
1 Boot to Windows.
2 Press <Alt> + <F10> to open the Acer eRecovery Management utility.
3 Enter the password to proceed. The default password is six zeros.
4 In the Acer eRecovery Management window, select Recovery actions and
click Next.
5 In the Recovery settings window, select Reinstall applications/drivers and
click Next.
6 Select the desired driver/application and follow the instructions on screen
to re-install.

First, you must remove the battery by pushing the battery release latch and sliding the battery out from the machine.

The hard drive will be located behind where the battery was, and you should be able to just carefully slide it out. Then you have to remove the hard drive from its holder by removing 2 screws.

Go to pages 52 and 55 on this document for complete instructions.

http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:Bd_vXG3IRTMJ:www.acerpanam.com/synapse/data/7117/documents/tm240_250sg.pdf+how+to+replace+hard+drive+in+travelmate+240&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

if its anything like my acer aspire 3000....if you tip it up and look to your left upper corner there is a small rectangle almost sqaures piec youtake out two  screws  undo another screw holding the housesing pull the tab on housing and voila! hard drive.happy hunting-z

Hard drive password is stored on a drives firmware chip. The password is used to protect data on the hard drive and moving it to another computer won't allow you to see or access data on that hard drive. There are no backdoor passwords available that you can use.
To get your laptop operational again, you need to replace the old hard drive with a new hard drive and install Windows again.
Otherwise you will have to keep trying all the passwords you can think of. If you succeed in getting in I suggest you remove this password.

no, all the notbook hard drive are the same.

You can use an external hard drive with an USB hard drive case and and connect it to your USB port

if your cdrom stops installing the operating system, then either the processor is damaged or the hard drive is faulty, as initially the installation files have to be installed to run the main O.S installation