Comment 10 for bug 452292

And unetbootin is avaliable in synaptic (or Software Centre) so all you need is to download new bios, format a USB stick making FreeDOS bootable stick, extract the bios package contents to the usb stick (open the package, select all, drag over to the stick), unmount stick, reboot the netbook, boot it from USB (freedos); When booted it lands on a:, so change to c: (type c: ) and then if you have directly copied the bios files from the zip file to the usb drive, you will have a 3309.bat file in the root directory, which you run by typing 3309.bat. The update will go on.
Make sure your netbook is on mains power and nothing can interrupt the flashing process (they don't say it anywhere, but I suppose it may matter).
When finished, the netbook will reboot itself and now acerhdf worked for me (without failing with unrecognized bios).

(Be sure what you're doing, I accept no liabiliy etc.)