Yes, you can put it into another slot to test your hypothesis (drive roaming is supported on PERC controllers), but it is far more likely a bad drive (or corrupt array if it returns immediately) than a bad backplane.  In a different slot, you may need to start a rebuild manually. If everything is working currently, your best course of action would be to make sure the system firmware (BIOS, ESM/BMC, RAID (driver first), and HDD) is up to date and run comprehensive diagnostics.
Hello, I have a PowerEdge 1800 that came up with a degraded RAID 5 disk array.  I replaced the hard drive and rebuilt the array, but I am concerned that the problem is actually with the backplane.  It is now functioning, but there was an amber light on the backplane when I replaced the drive into the same slot.  If the backplane is indeed bad, then I presume the problem will appear again. My question is this:  If the backplane slot does fail, can I remove the hard drive from the slot and replace it into another slot?  Will the array rebuild with the same hard drive, or does the drive need to be blank in order for the array to rebuild? (OMSA reports nothing on the backplane condition.)   Thanks very much for you help!
Backplane (possibly) failing on PowerEdge 1800 and RAID question