Well I am a bit confused with your whole setup but perhaps I just need to re-read.

One of the 3 drives is an external? Also I am unclear on "magic partitions"

You could try the manufacturers diagnostic on the hard drives. Most have a DOS boot version.

Anyway I am off for a couple hours but will re-read and post back any new ideas in a bit.

Did you have this setup set up previously? Did you have some type of major hardware or software crash?

That BIOS error is also curious.