Q:

Do RAID cards do any proprietary processing or disk formatting?

I have a RAID 1 that's spordically healthy; I finally narrowed it down to a cracked SATA connector on the RAID board. If I hold it ~just~ right, i get full contact on the connector and everything works fine. More often than not, the RAID controller reports one disc being down. Obviously, I need to replace the controller. Before I jump into that project, though, I want to understand what I'm up against in the process. I'm confident that my DATA itself is healthy, but the hardware used to access it unreliable at best.
Apart from knowing the different RAID levels, my knowledge of RAID technology is weak. Are these just standard NTFS volumes controlled and managed by my card? Or is there something proprietary that the card does between the OS and the disks?
Can I just replace a RAID card with any other RAID card and it'll work? Alternately, can I just take one of my RAID rives (since they're mirrored), plug it into an eSATA drive housing and access the data normally for transfer to a NEW RAID? 
Or am I looking at the prospect of holding the connector ~just~ right for hours while I copy everything to an external drive for re-copying to a new RAID once the hardware arrives?
What should I know and prepare for?

A:

What the RAID card exposes to windows is a standard NTFS volume. There is definitely something proprietary in most RAID cards. Something that prevents you from using it outside the RAID controller.
If you use the same RAID card and driver, firmware.. 100% yes. If not, that number decreases rapidly. No, I really don't think that will work.
Why? If it's RAID 1, it's a mirror. Just copy from the one disk, reformat both disks, install with new card, make the RAID volume, copy info back on.

