Raid 5 reliability question

[Fuelrod]

I'm trying to understand Raid 5 a little better. If I have a Raid 5 array in a machine that has built in Raid and the motherboard dies, can that Raid array be transferred to a new machine and keep the Raid data intact? It seems to me when you put the drives in a new machine it would want to create a new "container" that destroys the data. If so, even though you gain reliability from a drive failure perspective, you loss reliability because your data is now tied to the motherboard as well. Any help on the subject is appreciated.

 

[Idontcare]

In general yes the raid array can be transferred in that if you physically migrate the drives onto a duplicate hardware setup (i.e. physical replacement of the failed mobo or failed raid card with an effective duplicate) and you setup the bios to address the raid disks in the same manner they were addressed on the original hardware.

I have successfully dissasembled and reassembled (physically) raid arrays in the this manner on numerous occasions. But obviously it won't work if the manner in which the hardware failure occurs results in the raid array becoming fatally corrupted in its own right (voltage surge, etc).

And you got to keep the sata cable/port matched in the same order with the drives. I once reversed the ports on two drives and that caused problems (naturally, as you could imagine).

But as far as physically and logically transferring an existing raid volume to otherwise different raid hardware (mobo or dedicated card)...never tried it, have always assumed it was to be avoided at all costs out of nothing but paranoia of my own ignorance on the topic. So I am curious if it works.