I was wondering if that was the Promise RAID controller. I know someone who had their controller fail and they bought a new controller...except that if they set the new controller up with their old settings, it would initialize the drives.
According to Promise, there was no way to turn this option off. They offered two workarounds: 1) set up the controller and then real quick unplug the drives or cut the power. If your timing is perfect, it might not corrupt the drives. Or 2) buy an identical set of new hard drives and configure the controller while hooked up to those. Then, after it's done initializing, turn off the power and connect your old drives in place of the new ones.
On the other hand, I just replaced one of my MegaRAID 1500 controllers out here and the new card recognized all the old drives (22 of them on that system), restored the old configuration automatically, and booted right up. Even if I rearrange the drives, it'll give me a warning, but it'll still figure everything out and come right up.