I thought I would ask here since I got such great support in the MEI thread :)
Before I had to move to Chengdu for half a year, my Asus P8P67 destroyed itself in the weirdest way I've ever encountered. While browsing, my PC shut down. MoBo was broken as well as my CPU. I used the onboard intel RAID controller for a RAID1, which should work even without a RAID controller as far as I understand it and a RAID5... Yes I know it was stupid that I madeno backup... But most stuff on my RAID5 is not THAT important and I really really believed my HDD's would be the ones that die first... But unfortunatly I have a lot of photos I didn't backup... So to get to my actual questions:

What would be the best way to safe the hopefully still existing RAID5?
Does it matter if I buy the exact same Mainboard or can I try different ones with the same chipset?
Since the RAID1 HDD's would be readable even without the RAID, eould it be a good idea to put in the RAID1 first, to check if the new RAID controller can rebuild the old RAID, before putting in the RAID5?
If the new MoBo doesn't rebuild the RAID5, could it break it while trying to read the HDD's?

I can't really try anything out right now because I will not be at home till Febuary 2015, but I want to check my options in advance.

Old Systen specs:
Windows 7 x64 running on a Vertex3 120gb, should still work.
Asus P8P67 b3 with 3602 Bios
Intel i7-2700
8gb Corsair 1600mhz DDR3
RAID5 with 4 x Samsung EcoGreen F4 2TB HD204UI
RAID1 with 2 x Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB HD103SJ

Thanks for any help in advance.

I hope it's okay to "push" this old thread... but I wanted to share my experiences. A few days ago I fiiiiinally got my Skylake System, a 6700k and a Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7. After installing a fresh Windows 8.1 with all updates and the newest RST driver & software(14.6.1029), I plugged in my RAID 1 containing the two 1TB Samsung HDD's. Well... The RST software reported he found the RAID, he knew wich HDD's are part of it and knew the name of the raid, but.. for some reason one of the HDD's won't be recognized by my system, I don't know why but the HDD makes some seriously troubling noises... so it seems the HDD broke while not active(didn't know that was possible.. stored them all the time in my room inside the tower, never took them out..) But I could save my data without any trounle from the other HDD. Next thing was my RAID5, plugged them in and it worked. All HDD's recognized, all data available. Of course it had to do the usual initialization process. So, it is indeed possible to use a newer generation Intel RAID controller and it's even possible to use it from another vendor. The only big problem which I now have is, that every time I access the RAID1 or RAID5, all HDD's which are part of it make a *click* noise as if they were off before and it happens everytime, so if I open a folder, it clicks, if I open the file in it, it clicks again... I deactivated every energy saving feature, like power down for HDD's in the powercfg.cpl and the LPM feature of RST. There's no message or info that the RAID was created on an older or different RAID controller, but I hope that if I backup the data and recreate the RAIDs, it will stop... That is my only explanation for this behaviour.
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hmm ok.. I prevented the sleep mode, it's what I meant with powercfg.cpl(I always access it with this command) and I'm pretty sure it's not some kind of sleep mode because that would be really weird.. it's really like I open a folder and immidiatly open the file in it and they will jump both times with all HDD's... so they have to go to sleep after every action for that to be true :X
I will try a different driver then, I hope it will help... and thanks for the input!

sooo... I went back to 14.5.0.1081 which was the official version from the gigabyte support page... The clicking didn't change, but now I have a new error message. http://www.pic-upload.de/view-28407388/Z...lage02.png.html

It says something like "MD: Incompatible, Details: Your volume isn't compatible with your current systemconfiguration. You can delete it and create a new volume or you can switch back to your old systemconfiguration and use the volume again" for all non german speakers.

That's the message I would have expected from the start... Well I still think/hope the clicking will stop with a new created RAID, but this will take a while... don't know where to save more than 5 TB :X

You mean a RAID BIOS downgrade via BIOS mod? You think I can go that far back with such a new chipset?

*sigh*... I created a new RAID, first with the Software, it gave me the clicking noise again AND the message that the RAID was incompatible... so I delete the RAID again, go into the UEFI and make a new one there... aaaaand it's clicking... the incompatible message is there as well... I don't have a clue why this till occures... I update to the latest UEFI F5L(of course before I created the RAID) activated & deactivated LPM in the RST software and UEFI,changed the power plan, but no improvments at all... Maybe they have to click.. I don't know...

EDIT: Ok... now it's getting really weird... I deleted the RAID via RST Software, "clean"ed the HDD's via DISKPART, reinitilized them as GPT, formated them as NTFS, rebooted, changed the intel controller to AHCI and... they are still clicking...

all 5 HDD's which where once part of my old RAID are clicking, even without being in a RAID, the one HDD which was never part of any RAID, which is the oldest HDD I had in my old system... is not clicking... They can't be all damaged...

EDIT2: ok they are not damaged... I switched on of the former RAID HDD's to the seconed SATA controller, ASMEDIA 1061 or something like that, the clicking fiiinally stopped... The only explanation I now have, is that somewhere on the HDD, there's still some kind of RAID data...

EDIT3: Google tells me a low level format or clean all should help out, I will do a clean all tomorrow.

Well.. the clicking didn't stop after a "clean all"... all that's left is a low level format :X

EDIT: Didn't help either...

I'm out of ideas

EDIT2: So... I hope/guess I found the problem... I'm at work right now, so I won't be able to test it in the next few hours but...
https://communities.intel.com/thread/533...rt=135&tstart=0
This threads describes my problem perfectly, most of them even have the exact same hdd's as I have. One of them even came here for a workaround:
v12.9.4.1000 WHQL + Z97 + WINDOWS 8.1
which I will try out today.

Unbelievable that this problem is known since driver version 13.1, I remember using 12.9 in my old system, so of course this was never an issue back then... So obviously I was thinking it had something to do with the new RAID controller...

EDIT3: It's finally gone... I'm so relieved... I hope my HDD's didn't take too much damage... 12.9.4 installed, no clicking anymore...

I still can't believe how insanely stupid this error is and that they didn't fix it in all that time... Because this is just a workaround, these old driver are slower(tested with my vertex 3, makes 20-30 mb/s less now in reading) and I can't use RST...