World: r3wp

and still today obviously

I think the name is Proliant, but the motherboard is certainly well 
past Compaq days

Yeah most likely - Are the drives external or internal?

internal

termination should'nt be the problem then.  Do you get the bios info 
of the card and able to get into its config at boot up?

yes.

Does it show both drives?

yes.

So these are old drives that have data that you still want the data 
from correct?

yeah.

just the first drive.. the second drive is new.

hmmm...  That is a strange animal as usually you have to setup the 
correct type of raid and then initialize but I have seen data loss 
doing it

ok.  Here is an idea then

You want to establish the drives as a raid setup but fail the new 
drive and have it rebuilt it

yes.

You did that part?

I wasn't able to tell the controller I wanted to setup raid 1, it 
only allowed me to say "volume"

The controller support raid?

yes ..

Nothing about "mirroring" which is what raid 1 is?

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/proddetail.html?sess=no&language=English+US&prodkey=ASR-2120S&cat=%2fTechnology%2fUltra320%2fUltra320+RAID

the only "array type" listed is "volume"?

volume' looks like it would be the first listed type but that field 
should be changable

Should also have Raid 0 1 5 10 and 50

can't change the field.. the tech guy says the card is smart enough 
to know that I have a drive initialised from a diffferent controller.

and it was a mirror before correct?

no.  I got the server with only one drive .. raid card and other 
drive on backorder.

So, installed win 2003 server on the first drive and used it till 
the raid card arrived.

You might need to backup the data somewhere and rebuilt a complete 
new array and restore

yeah .. that's what he told me.

But it's not what the manual says

Yeah I have seen where we were able before to blow out the disk ordinals 
and rebuld them into an array but I'm not sure of the integrity or 
capability of that card in doing it

Adding the Controller to an Existing System
In this scenario, you are adding an Adaptec SCSI RAID 2120S/

2200S controller to a system that already has a Windows 2000 or XP
operating system.
To install the driver:
1 Install and configure your controller and hard disk drives
according to the instructions in Chapter 2.
2 Start Windows. Windows launches the Found New Hardware
Wizard, which searches for the controller driver.
3 Insert the driver disk you created at the beginning of this
chapter. Select the disk drive as the source, then click Next..
Since the driver is also on the installation CD, you may wish to
insert the installation CD and have Windows search it for the
driver. Windows will find multiple drivers, select the
appropriate one for the operating system being used.
4 Click Next in the succeeding two windows that appear and
follow the on-screen instructions to complete the controller
installation.
5 Remove the driver disk and restart the system.

on step 2, it just reboots the PC forever.

You doing all your configuration from inside windows?

never got to boot up Windows

You might try from CTRL-A at boot up when the SCSI bios message apears

keeps recycling.

I can configure the raid card using ctrl-A

Yeah that is what you need to do

I think I'll bite the bullet and backup, rebuild the array, reinstall 
Windows 2003, and then restore :(

Yeah do the backup regardless but I would suggest before you go further 
than that - that you try and clear the NVRAM of the card and wipe 
the disk config and rebuild both and try not to initialize unless 
it forces you to.  Then fail the second drive and see if you can 
rebuilt it then.  But get the backup first.

how to clear the nvram?

When I say wipe the disk config there should be an option to write 
config to disk in the utility and that will do the wiping of the 
disk config.

ok, I"ll look at that tonight.

The utility probably has an option to clear its configuration

Just remember this.  That is usually write a config to the disk itself. 
 This is how it knows what slot or position the drive is even if 
you move them around.  But the NVRAM is on the card and usually backed 
up by battery power to retain the configuration (you need to blow 
that away).

no battery so I'll just remove the card.

Hmm..

Ahhh that one has an (optional) battery module.