I was going to keep my nose out of this, but I'm so thoroughly confused that
I have to butt in.

What are you trying to do? Test the drives? If so, this seems about the
worst possible way. It would make more sense to set these drives as slaves
and boot them on a known-good computer (as someone else suggested). Even
better, if they're IDE-ATA drives, you can mount them in a box with a USB
interface, and simply attach them to a running machine.

What is the question you're asking? I suspect it's the wrong one.