"if it is possible to simply transfer all five drives to a refurbished PE2650?" Yes, this is possible and fairly simple and straightforward. When you put the drives in a new one and power up, you will see a message about a mismatch.  You MUST accept the changes to resolve the mismatch.  Also, to make sure it works, make sure the firmware on the "new" 2650 is newer than the old one (you can simply update to the latest). "are the RAID controllers in more recent PE's backwards compatible" No.  New servers use SAS and SATA drives, which are 0% compatible with the older SCSI that the 2650 uses. 
Hi, Sorry if this is a very basic question, I've not got much experience with RAID arrays. My venerable PE2650 has recently died - when turned on it just sits there with the fans whirling.  I connected a monitor and keyboard but it doesn't get as far as sending bios output to the screen. There is no output on the LCD display, though all the drives spin up and both power supplies seem to be working. After about 20 power cycles with different combinations of RAM sticks it did start successfully, but only the once and it stayed up for about 5hrs (no load) before freezing and then refusing to start again. I have information on a raid 5 array that I wish to recover from the machine. I notice that refurbished PE2650's are going for next to nothing on Ebay and was wondering if it is possible to simply transfer all five drives to a refurbished PE2650? If that would work, it would seem the easiest option. On  a similar train of thought, are the RAID controllers in more recent PE's backwards compatible - could I upgrade to a newer server and simply slot my existing drives in? Thanks in advance for any answers! Sam
Transfering drives from PE2650 Raid Array